Survivors of the stolen generation were present in the gallery as members of the NSW Parliament offered apologies for past government policies, which saw the separation of Aboriginal children from their families.
The apologies came as the state government tabled a report on Tuesday which makes 33 recommendations for reparations.
The parliamentary inquiry spent months examining responses to the landmark 1997 Bring Them Home Report, which prompted the national apology delivered by former prime minister Kevin Rudd eleven years later.
In a report tabled to NSW parliament on Thursday, the parliamentary committee recommended that a financial reparation scheme, similar to those in place in Tasmania and South Australia, be established in the state.
Such a payment "would acknowledge the devastating impacts caused to those who were forcibly removed from their family", the report said.
Setting up an educational scholarship scheme and a special health care card, which allows for lower medication and GP costs, would go a long way toward assisting survivors' needs, it said.
The upper house committee also called for an independent audit of government departments that deal with survivors as well as better training for staff who work with Aboriginal children.
"We are sorry, we are very, very sorry for the past," Greens MLC and committee chair, Jan Barham said while handing down the report.
The inquiry's recommendations were achievable, she said, while also apologising for the "wrongdoings" against Aboriginal people in NSW.
"We can't change the past but we can change the future," she said.
Isobel Reid, who grew up in the Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls Home after being separated from her family, was present for Thursday’s proceedings, brought back painful memories.
"We were kidnapped," she said.
"I was coming home from school with my brother and my sister. We were good kids dressed nice and everything - taken away and put in the cells for the night.
"And you can imagine… I was seven. My sister was five and my brother was 11.”
The NSW Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Leslie Williams, also made a personal apology to the survivors of the Stolen Generation.
"Today I make my own apology to the Stolen Generations - past government practice had a profound effect on Aboriginal people," she said on Thursday.
- with AAP
