Australia?s government yesterday rejected demands for a A$1 billion 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 a 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.