Australian PM says sorry to Britons forcibly shipped to Australia as children

Rudd's statement came after the British government announced that Gordon Brown would offer an apology to the displaced children.

Speaking at a ceremony in the capital, Canberra, the Australian prime minister told around 900 former child migrants he apologised for the "absolute tragedy of childhoods lost".

"We are sorry," he said. "Sorry that, as children, you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused.

"Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care."

Government records show that at least 150,000 children aged between three and 14 were sent to Commonwealth countries, mainly Australia and Canada, in a programme that began in the 1920s and did not end until 1967.

The children – the majority of whom were already in some form of social or charitable care – were cut off from their families and even falsely informed that they were orphans.