When Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stands up in Parliament today, Debra Hocking will be one of hundreds of thousands of Aborigines who will be glued to their television.
For Mrs Hocking, a Tasmanian of Aboriginal and European descent, Mr Rudd's apology for the decades-long practice of removing mixed-race Aboriginal children from their families as part of a policy of forced racial assimilation, is long overdue.
According to a text of today's motion, parliamentarians would apologise to Aborigines for 'the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these, our fellow Australians'.
Mrs Hocking says the apology, which Mr Rudd promised during November's election campaign, will help her move on.
A member of the so-called 'Stolen Generation', she was removed from her parents as a baby, along with her four siblings.
The children were split up and Mrs Hocking, 49, was sent to a foster home where she suffered 15 years of ill-treatment.
