Payouts for stolen children

One-off cash payments are to be made to indigenous Australians who were forcibly removed from their families as children, to redress a “shameful” period in the nation’s history, the government has said.

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,” Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, told parliament last week.

“We have already confronted it with the national apology but our deeds must continue to match our words,” he said.