The French-Swiss national public radio service (RTS La 1ère), has just broadcast a half-hour report on the evening in July, during the Caux Forum for Human Security, which focused on former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Aboriginals of the Stolen Generations.

Louie Gardener. Fighting for our lives.

At the start of its summer celebration of the cultural wealth of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, the City of London Festival issued a challenge to Britain to harness the power of public apology. On 30 June, the fifth day of the Festival, Aboriginal broadcaster and entertainer Mark Bin Bakar described the impact of the Australian Prime Minister’s apology on the ‘stolen generations’ of Aboriginal children who were taken from their mothers under Australia’s infamous assimilation policies.

The Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group asked John Bond (for nearly 10 years Secretary of the National Sorry Day Committee) to talk at a public meeting on 10 May about the campaign in Australia which led last year to the public apology by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to the Aboriginal leaders of the country.

John Bond, former Secretary of the National Sorry Day campaign in Australia, captivated Nottingham’s Lord Mayor, Councillor Gul Nawaz Khan, and the audience at the St Barnabas Cathedral when he spoke about Australia's Journey of Healing.

Le 13 février 2008, dans un discours historique prononcé devant le parlement australien, et retransmis en direct par les chaînes nationales, le Premier ministre Kevin Rudd a demandé pardon aux premiers habitants du pays, les Aborigènes.

When Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, stood up in Parliament three months ago to face up to the shameful past policies towards Indigenous Australians and to offer a formal apology, John Bond knew more than most about the decade-long journey of campaigning it had taken to get there. Bond was a guest-speaker at the London centre of Initiatives of Change on 13 May.

Chapter three of Forgiveness: Breaking the Chain of Hate

These are the words Fiona gave in evidence before an Australian Royal Commission, describing her abduction from her mother. She was not to see her again until 1968: “When I finally met my mother through an interpreter she said that she had heard about the other children, but because my name had been changed she’d never heard about me.”

National Sorry Day – Australia
From Saying Sorry to a Journey of Healing

Seldom can the uttering of one word have caused such joy across a nation.