Today's parliamentary apology to the Stolen Generation offers a wonderful opportunity for Australia to finally embrace a true understanding of itself and its history.

The ceremony at Parliament House though is not the end of a process.

Aboriginal elders like Dr Eve Fesl are right to be concerned that there is a danger that what should be the beginning of a substantive change in both white attitude and black circumstance may deliver little more than words that float off into the air.

The words are important too but until they are in front of us this morning, it is difficult to gauge just how much solace they can in themselves bring.

An apology was a promise made during the 2007 election campaign and its delivery fulfils part of Labor’s election mandate.

It was difficult therefore to understand exactly what opposition leader Brendan Nelson was moaning about on Monday when he declared that he was the most important person that Mr Rudd should be speaking to about exactly what those words would be.

It was an interesting analysis plaintive in its delivery, and as attractive as his consultative style may be to colleagues weary after a decade of being told what to think, likely to spell the beginning of the end of the Liberal Party’s first attempt to replace John Howard.

Rightly Mr Rudd has spent his time, in searching for the right words, with Aboriginal victims of a viciously racist government policy.

That policy, which destroyed so many lives with its intent to separate children with an ounce of white linage from Aborigine communities, was every bit as destructive in impact if not scale, as the social engineering of Nazi Germany.

Children were arbitrarily, and often with no warning, ripped from the embrace of their families and shunted from one end of the country to the other.

Despite the terrible despair that caused at least two generations and the damage it did to the structure of Aboriginal communities, the survival of so many and the way the battle for rights and justice has been maintained, speaks volumes for the courage of many.

It is time to acknowledge the hurt and to salute that courage and, in time, to celebrate it.

Regardless of what some in the Liberal Party and others may think, today’s apology is not about them.

It is not about their prejudices, misconceptions, ignorance, nor their fear.

Today should be a day for the victims.

Today should be a day for the truth to finally be acknowledged and spoken.

Tomorrow will be the beginning of putting substance to the words.

Tomorrow provides the chance to begin the process of changing the way we think about our past, about changing the way we teach the history of this country from its Anglo-bias to the truth and tomorrow should bring renewed vigour to correct the terrible imbalance of health, education, wealth and life expectancy of our Aboriginal population.

Australia has always been quick to criticise any history taught in the schools of Germany and Japan that in any way diluted the true story of World War Two, arguing that the lessons that need to be learned from it, should never be lost on the children of either country.

We in turn have often been criticised in Asia for what some see as an attitude of moral superiority.

It is criticism that has always had some substance given the way we have ignored the reality of our own history and the treatment of this nation’s indigenous population.

When Mr Rudd stands up this morning he will not only be addressing past wrongs and re-affirming respect for our first inhabitants, he will also end an hypocrisy that has eroded our national credibility.

There will be those with a lawyer’s eye, be that bush or learned, who will examine the minutia of the prime minister’s speech looking for any and every miserable debating point to fuel their affront.

Our democracy allows them that right.

But for the sake of all of us it is to be hoped that it is their words and that sentiment that float off into the air.