Australia govt rules out aboriginal compensation

By Rob Taylor

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's government on Monday rejected demands for a A$1 billion (443 million pound) compensation fund for aboriginal children taken from their families, but said it would apologise for last century's assimilation policies.

As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd prepares an official apology from his new centre-left Labor government when parliament resumes next month, overturning a decade of conservative opposition, aboriginal leaders demanded a billion dollar reparation fund.

"People get paid crimes compensation. You are looking at the gross violation and the act of genocide and all the inhumane things that have happened to our people," Lyn Austin, head of Stolen Generations in the state of Victoria, told local radio.

Stolen Generations is an advocacy group for aborigines removed in their youth from their families in various assimilation efforts.

Aborigines are Australia's most disadvantaged group. Many live in third world conditions in remote outback settlements.

The 1997 "Bringing Them Home" report found Stolen Generation children, as depicted in the 2002 film "Rabbit-Proof Fence", were forcibly taken and placed in orphanages run by churches or charities, or fostered out to socialise them to European culture.

Some were brutalised or abused, with harsh punishment for speaking in indigenous languages instead of English.

The Stolen Generations report recommended reparations, but Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin backed the previous conservative preference for practical measures to lift health and education standards for Aborigines.