An annual event since its inauguration on this day in 1998, National Sorry Day, also called the National Day of Healing, remembers and commemorates the mistreatment of the country’s Indigenous peoples, as part of an ongoing process of reconciliation between the Indigenous peoples of Australia and the settler population.
The first National Sorry Day was held on the one-year anniversary of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report, a key recommendation of which was a formal apology to the Stolen Generations. John Howard, who was prime minister at the time, refused to issue an apology, but Kevin Rudd on February 13, 2008 issued a formal apology on behalf of the government and Australian people.
-Wikipedia