NSW MP makes Stolen Generation apology

The NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs has made a personal apology to the survivors of the Stolen Generation.

It comes after a NSW parliamentary inquiry recommended that a financial compensation scheme be set up for the thousands of Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families up until the 1970s.

"Today I make my own apology to the Stolen Generations - past government practice had a profound effect on Aboriginal people," Minister Leslie Williams said on Thursday.

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 11 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" on Aboriginal people in NSW.

"We can't change the past but we can change the future," she said.

Minister Williams said she would work closely with Stolen Generations survivor representatives as she works on the government's response to the report.