Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of Australia, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on how badly we, the Australian Government, treated them in the past. We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations - the darkest chapter in our nation's history. The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologise for the laws and policies of former parliaments and governments that caused deep pain and suffering on the Indigenous peoples. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities, and their country.

For the pain, suffering, and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants, and their families left behind, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the suffering inflicted on the Aboriginal peoples and culture, we say sorry. We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered - as part of the healing of the nation. Today, we take this first step toward the future by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

Some have asked, Why apologise? Let me begin to answer by telling the parliament just a little of one person's story. Nanna Nungala Fejo was born in the late 1920s. She remembers her earliest childhood days living with her family and her community in a bush camp. She remembers the love, warmth, and happiness of those days long ago, including traditional dancing around the campfire at night. In 1932, when she was four, she remembers the coming of the welfare men. Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the river bank where the children could run and hide. What her family had not expected was that the white welfare men did not come alone. They brought a truck, two white men, and an Aboriginal stockman on horseback with a whip. The kids were found; they ran, screaming for their mothers, but they could not get away. They were piled onto the back of the truck. Tears flowing, her mum tried clinging to the sides of the truck as her children were taken away in the name of protection.

Nanna Fejo's is just one story. There are thousands, tens of thousands, of them. These are stories of forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their mums and dads over the better part of a century. Some of these stories are told in the report, Bringing them home. They are terrible stories. The pain is torturous; it screams from the pages. The brutal act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our basic humanity.

These stories cry out to be heard; they cry out for an apology. Instead, from the nation's parliament there has been a stubborn and complete silence for much too long. There has been a view that we, the parliament, should suspend our most basic instincts of what is right and what is wrong; a view that, instead, Parliament should look for any excuse to push this great wrong to one side and to leave it with the historians and the academics, as if the Stolen Generations are little more than an interesting sociological phenomenon. But the Stolen Generations are not intellectual curiosities. They are human beings; human beings who have been damaged deeply by the decisions of parliaments and governments. But, as of today, the time for denial and delay has come to an end.

The nation is demanding that its political leadership take us forward. Decency, human decency, universal human decency, demands that the nation now step forward to right a historical wrong. That is what we are doing in this place today. Let us turn this page together, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, government and opposition, Commonwealth and state, and write this new chapter in our nation's story together. Let us grasp this opportunity to craft new future for this great land, Australia.

ICT makes our lives simple and convenient. With your smartphone, you can control the temperature and light of your home remotely. Using apps, you can find out where your bus is and when it will arrive. There are many other areas where ICT is increasingly being used such as education and health. Agriculture is no exception. Smart farming, which uses ICT in agriculture, includes things like drones, robots, and big data. It is revolutionizing how farmers do their jobs. Let's take a look at how technology is changing life on the farm.

Drones, small unmanned aerial vehicles, do many jobs on a farm. One of these is to survey fields. Survey drones have GPS-controlled autopilots that let them take off, fly their routes, and land by themselves. They are also equipped with many cameras that take pictures of the fields from the air. As the drones fly, they take pictures from different angles and with different lenses. The images are then analyzed to check for weed growth, ground moisture, and soil conditions. Especially, when drones take pictures with infrared lenses, which sense heat, they can see if plants are healthy or not - because healthy and unhealthy plants give off different amounts of heat. This information helps farmers take care of their crops better, thus increasing the quality and quantity of production.

An army of agribots, small autonomous robots designed for agricultural purposes, replaces human workers for a wide range of tasks. In general, agribots tend crops, and each of them is highly specialized for weeding, fertilizing, harvesting, or other farm work. Agribots have many benefits. For example, weeding robots can reduce the amount of pollution caused by herbicide use. Fertilizing robots can greatly reduce fertilizer costs by precisely applying the correct amount of fertilizer in the correct location. Using 3D imaging cameras, harvesting robots can pick fruits and vegetables without damaging them. Most importantly, agribots can operate 24/7, 365 days a year, solving the shortage of farm labor while increasing the speed and accuracy of the work.

Although agribots are widely used in all the important functions of farming, tractors are still needed for many large-scale and heavy-load tasks. Nowadays, they are evolving into self-driving vehicles. Smart tractors are equipped with GPS controls. They also have optimized route planning software which recommends the shortest route across the field. This can minimize soil erosion by ensuring that all farm tractors follow the same tracks. In addition, the self-driving tractors are accurate down to the millimeter. This means that they can plant seeds in the correct place and harvest crops with no unnecessary movements. Besides, they can reduce crop damage and other losses caused by human drivers going off track and into the crops. These smart, self-driving vehicles can also operate during low visibility conditions such as rain, dust, fog, and darkness.

Sensors attached to cows check their temperature, movement, behavior, and so on. When changes are observed, the sensors send a message to the farmer's phone or computer. For example, these sensors are being used to detect if an animal's back legs begin to lower, which is one of the first signs of illness. They can also sense if a cow is pregnant. This technology saves farmers dozens of hours a week that would otherwise be spent closely monitoring each cow. It also saves money for vets' bills by allowing farmers to deal with cows' illnesses before they get too serious. It goes without saying that using sensors to monitor the health of individual cows lets them live longer, healthier lives, and also improves milk production.

Smart farms take all the information from drones and animal sensors and collect it in the cloud. The information can be analyzed and then presented to farmers in a practical way. Based on the analyzed data, the farmers make informed decisions about an animal, a field, or the entire farm. The farmers' decisions are programmed into agribots and smart tractors immediately. The more data there are about conditions on the farm, the more accurate the decisions will be, making the farm more efficient and profitable. In a world with fewer food resources, but with more people to feed, ICT-based agriculture can help humankind address the challenges of the future. The amount of food produced can be maximized, while the impact on the environment can be minimized through the efficient use of people, equipment, and information. The future of agriculture depends on the smart use of ICT.