Australia’s government said it will issue a formal apology to Aboriginal people at the parliament’s first assembly.

This will be the first item of business when the new legislature convened on 13 February, said the Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin.

The apology concerns the issue of the aboriginal children taken from their parents to be included in white families. This Australian problem was labeled as the "Stolen Generation" and, according to the Indigenous Affairs Minister, it is the "first, necessary step to move forward from the past".

The plans to issue an apology to the aboriginal people were first announced by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd after he won last year's general elections with the Labor Party.

"The apology will be made on behalf of the Australian government and does not attribute guilt to the current generation of Australian people," Macklin said in a statement. She added that the content of the apology was agreed upon after wide consultation with Aboriginal leaders.

The idea of financial compensation for the aboriginal families which lost their children was ruled out by Macklin and Rudd in the past and it wasn’t even mentioned in the statement held by Macklin Wednesday.

Macklin said that she focused most of all on the wording of the apology hoping that this symbolic act will mark the beginning of a relationship between Australia and its impoverished minority.

"Once we establish this respect, the government can work with indigenous communities to improve services aimed at closing the 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians," she said.

In a period of about 60 to 70 years, from 1910 until the 1970s, approximately 100,000 Aboriginal children were taken from their parents. This was made under the state and federal laws based on the premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and savin heir children was the only thing left to do.

Indigenous Australians are descendants of the first human inhabitants of the Australian continent, including its nearby islands. The Aboriginal People and the Torres Strait Islanders (indigenous Australians who live in the Torres Strait Islands between Australia and New Guinea) make up about 2.4% of Australia's current population (about 450,000 among a population of 21 million).

Indigenous Australians have arrived on the continent some when between 70,000 and 40,000 years ago.