Inquiries into the removal and mistreatment of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, national regret, and national apologies constitute a congested political landscape in contemporary Australia. Within two years, two formal apologies were delivered by the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, to individuals who had suffered forced removal from family and consequent mistreatment as children. These apologies came as the culmination of over a decade of serial formal inquiries that saw at least five national- or state-level investigations into the past treatment of children, the results of concerted activism by the groups concerned. In the case of Indigenous activism around child removal, the roots run deep into the twentieth century. Australia has seen an expansion of the space and subject of regret and apology from one initially focused on reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous Australians to one that now encompasses a range of non-Indigenous individuals who were mistreated as children and to whom a formal apology has now been delivered in a second act of national reconciliation. (Contains 43 notes.)