National Sorry Day

Events are taking place around Australia today to mark National Sorry Day, which acknowledges the historical mistreatment of Aboriginal people, including members of the Stolen Generation.

Among the events - which are pushing for a referendum on Indigenous recognition in the Constitution - is a national relay.

The foot, bike and car relay kicked off in Melbourne this morning and will head to Adelaide before travelling up to Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory over the next 11 weeks.

The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, is one of three federal ministers joining today's relay leg.

Ms Macklin says the Government is committed to changing the constitution but it is not the right time to ask the Australian public.

"We want to have a referendum when it has the most chance of success," she said.

"This really is the strong view of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

"We don't want to have a referendum that goes down.

"We want to make sure that we get this referendum through with as much support as possible."

But Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, says there is strong public support.

Mr Gooda says, however, there is a lack of understanding about what changing the Constitution will mean.

"We have a bit of a conundrum where we have polling that shows 75 per cent of Australians say 'yes, we should recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution'," he said.

"But then there's a very low level of awareness of the detail of that.

"This is a chance to raise awareness before we get to the point where we have Parliament decide what sort of questions are put to people in a referendum."

AFL legend Michael Long is leading the first leg of the Journey to Recognition relay, which will then be continued by other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants.

Recognise campaign director Tanya Hosch says the Constitution needs to be changed to recognise the first Australians.

She says the first step is to convince the Federal Government to hold a referendum.

Our intention is to travel as far and wide across the country until we get to referendum day.

Tanya Hosch
"The only way to have a successful campaign on a question as important as this is to reach out to as many Australians as possible, make sure that they know all about this," she said.

"It's really important that the whole part of Australia's history and the wonderful things about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and cultures actually become included in our founding documents.

"Our intention is to travel far and wide across the country until we get to referendum day."