Australian Families Minister Jenny Macklin has announced that her government will formally offer its apologies to hundreds of thousands of children abused in state-run orphanages.

The minister estimates that in the past 100 years around 500,000 children were abused or neglected in public institutions that were supposed to protect them. She said terrible injustices had been inflicted.

Among the children were 10,000 boys and girls from poor British families who were sent to Australia in the decades following World War II. They were locked up in orphanages even though at least one of their parents was still alive.

A Senate inquiry held five years ago recommended the government offer a formal apology to the abused children. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will deliver the apology. In February 2008, Mr Rudd also apologised to the Aboriginal community for centuries of injustice by white Australians.