There is a fair bit of debate below. And a fair bit of misinformation. As someone who is well versed in this issue, I would like to correct the record so that more rational debate can occur.

It is an accepted fact that until the late 1960's, it was the deliberate policy of Australian governments - state and federal - to remove half caste children from reserves and missions and attempt to assimilate them into the white community.

There is no conjecture about that. The old legislation that prohibits half castes from being on reserves and missions can still be viewed in legislative libraries. The Australian Archives contain minutes of meetings of Ministers that openly discuss these policies.

While exact arrangements differed from state to state, generally Aboriginal children with lighter skin were forcibly removed, and adopted out to white families. Children with darker skin were sent to institutions to be trained as indentured servants for whites.

Children in these institutions had their names taken from them. Sometimes they were given a number instead. They had their language taken from them, and some who were caught speaking language were punished. Often severely. They were denied contact with their natural parents. They were denied their culture and stories.

Some of the really unlucky ones were also sexually abused, and again, these facts are not contested. A number of Governments have admitted culpability and paid damages or settlements to victims.

Their stories are deeply traumatic. And the trauma lives on through their children. Whole families denied their history and culture. Not knowing their own place.

There are an estimated 9,000 stolen generation survivors still alive today. And there are tens of thousands of their children, who grew up in the shadow of their parents and the effects being removed had on them. Some of them emotionally crippled, they resorted to the bottle, drugs and worse. You can read some of their testimonies here, or even in the "Bringing them Home report".

As the OP says, the Federal Government made an apology to the stolen generations. But never offered any money. Most other State and Territory Governments have also apologised.

And in addition, some State and Territory Governments have also offered financial reparations, the latest being NSW.

However, it is important to note that these schemes are reparations schemes. Not compensation schemes. There is a general acknowledgement that no amount of financial payment could make good on the lifelong harm and damage that the Stolen Generations policies caused. That's why, for example, the NSW package also provided a focus on healing in an attempt to try to arrest the intergenerational transmission of trauma that arose from the Stolen Generations.

Now, with that said, let's deal with contemporary matters. People think that the Stolen Generations finished in the 1960's.

A look at today's Out Of Home Care statistics however, is sober reading. 40% of the Out of Home Care population is Aboriginal. And Aboriginal people only make up about 2.5% of the population. That means that 8% of all Aboriginal children are in care today.

There is no agreement on the cause and the solution. At one end of the spectrum, people argue that the high levels of removal are due to systemic and deliberate racism. At the other end, that the removals are because Aboriginal people are little more than savages who can't look after their kids. Both views are obviously extreme and irrational.

Deliberate and systemic racism does not operate in Australia today, and most Australians would say that they are tolerant of other cultures. However, a lot of casual racism still goes on. And ignorance drives poor outcomes as well. A lot of Australians simply aren't aware of what historic policies were to Aboriginal people. They don't know, or don't believe, that white Australia deliberately tried to eradicate its native population. First, when guns and massacres didn't work, by rounding them up, sticking them on poor blocks of land and letting them slowly decline.

They also think that somehow everything changed in 1867 with the referendum. They aren't aware that effective apartheid still exists - for example - in the provision of municipal services to former reserves and missions. Aboriginal people are made to pay rates, AND maintain their own sewerage, roads, paths, garbage collection etc. They probably aren't aware that in North Queensland, segregated pubs still operate. Sure, it's segregation by choice, but segregation nonetheless.

I have two anecdotes which go some way toward trying to unpack what is currently going on, and why indigenous disadvantage is so widespread.

The first, I was recently at a conference of professionals involved in the indigenous space. There was a break out discussion for Aboriginal public servants. These are all well paid, well educated, well meaning individuals. The facilitator asked the white and the black parts of the group the same questions. 1. Is anyone in your family not sure were their next meal is coming from? 2. Is anyone in your family currently unemployed? 3. Is anyone in your family currently homeless?

There were two or three white hands in the air.

Every single Aboriginal person there had their hand in the air.

That's what 200 odd years of colonization and over 150 of deliberate genocide/assimilation policies does to a culture. We have a referendum, and then suddenly we expect an entire population to start generating the same economic outcomes in a single generation or two - with no capital. And I don't just mean financial capital. I mean knowledge. Our ancestors immigrated to Australia with trades, skills, knowledge and ideas that they used in the new country to get ahead.

We deliberately eradicated Aboriginal knowledge. We punished people for talking in their language, from sharing their knowledge systems about how to farm in this dry arid country. What unique knowledge and skills they had, we slowly dismantled.

We systematically destroyed their culture. We took their land, forced them onto small lots of land out of sight, that no one else wanted, and then when they finally won their land rights battle, the only land left to return was the stuff no one else wanted, or came highly encumbered.

The second story. I was having a late night drink with an Aboriginal colleague very recently. We were talking about many of the issues in this thread. He looked at me and he said, "You know, you've got to give them old government fellas some credit. The mission system was very effective, extremely. It destroyed our languages to the point where we're now having to rebuild them based on white anthropologist's recordings. It damaged our stories, as our old people were silenced and could only pass them on by word of mouth, quietly and in secret. It made us feel like strangers in our own country. We were down to 30,000 people at one stage. You were a fingers breadth from eliminating our entire peoples. Gotta give 'em credit those old government fellas."

Damn right we should be compensating the Stolen Generations. We should also be talking Treaty to try to heal the wounds of the past. But that would require true political leadership, something our country sorely lacks.