Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison reacting during a press conference at Australia's Parliament House in Canberra on March 22, 2021. Photo: VCG

Australia will provide one-off cash payments of $60,000 to many Indigenous Australians who were forcibly removed from their families as children, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Thursday, to redress what he described as a "shameful" period in the nation's history.

Thousands of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were taken from their homes and put in foster care with white families under official assimilation policies that persisted into the 1970s.

"What happened is a shameful chapter in our national story," Morrison told parliament of the "Stolen Generation" of Indigenous Australians.

"We have already confronted it with the national apology but our deeds must continue to match our words," he said in a statement. 

The tales of the suffering caused were "not simply stories of the past but stories that continue to reverberate through the generations."

Campaigners for the rights of Indigenous Australians, who remain heavily disadvantaged in terms of health, income and education, welcomed the announcement but said it was long overdue.

Morrison said Aus$378.6 million ($280 million) would be allocated to redress the human damage of the assimilation policy.

The payments will be available to those living in territories that were run by the Commonwealth at the time of the forced removals - the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory, which is home to the capital Canberra, and Jervis Bay territory.

Some other Australian states have set up redress schemes but the federal government had not followed suit until now.

The scheme offers survivors a one-off payment of Aus$75,000 in recognition of the harm caused; a "healing assistance" payment of Aus$7,000; and the opportunity to tell their stories to a senior government official and receive a face-to-face or written apology.

The federal payments are part of an Aus$1 billion plan to reduce the sharp inequalities faced by Indigenous Australians.

AFP