With an outpouring of emotion, tens of thousands watched Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations at outdoor broadcasts. Many more, in virtually every sizeable workplace, had a venue for collective viewing of the apology, the CFMEU organised Aboriginal flags to fly from building sites, school teachers and students staged their own apology ceremonies, and even small workplaces stopped and watched.

The apology would not have happened without the refusal of Aboriginal people to be silenced, and not just on the question of the Stolen Generations. Years of campaigning on deaths in custody, land rights, and every other racist attack meant that Rudd's speech had to go beyond the apology, acknowledging all kinds of mistreatment up to the 1970s. The speech attacked the idea that the policies were for Aboriginal people's own good, and recognised that it had all been deliberate government action, not just a few mistaken individuals. The massively hostile response to Nelson's toxic speech showed that right-wingers have been further marginalised.

On the other hand, the limits were also clear. Rudd deliberately didn't mention compensation, or the word "genocide", and thus, as Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell pointed out, there was no explanation of why these policies were pursued. The bipartisan "war cabinet" which Rudd is promoting is not at all positive. Involving the Liberals is just an excuse for Labor inaction, as it will only do what Nelson will agree to.

The apology confirms and strengthens widespread confidence that the Howard era is over, that people have a right to expect better than was on offer then. The popularity of "From little things, big things grow" as an anthem for the apology indicates an expectation that more is to come.

A sign of this was the vibrant demonstration that greeted the opening of the new parliament the day before the apology. Welcoming the long-overdue apology does not just mean accepting what Rudd offers.

Fifteen hundred people, a majority of them Aboriginal, rallied against Rudd's continuation of the Howard government-initiated intervention into NT Aboriginal communities. They called for an end to this racist military intervention, with its suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act in order to allow the communities to be invaded and welfare payments to be "quarantined" purely on the basis that the recipients are Aboriginal, while issues such as housing and health remain unaddressed.

They had come from all over the country in possibly the biggest national Aboriginal mobilisation since tens of thousands came to Sydney to protest the Bicentenary in 1988. And the depth of feeling about the issue goes beyond the numbers present on the day.

Many of the Aboriginal people at the rally were there as representatives of remote (or just poverty-stricken) organisations and communities that could not afford to send more people.

Although the media has downplayed the anti-government aspect of the demo, lumping the convergence in with the next day's apology, the chant that dominated the march was "Stop the intervention". People from the NT had started their journey before the date of the apology was even set.

The NT intervention was widely characterised from the platform as apartheid and speeches were full of repeated references to things that governments never mention - recognition of sovereignty, compensation, a treaty, resistance to genocide.

Yet at the end of February the federal Labor Government announced the extension of a key aspect of the intervention, "welfare quarantining", into many more Aboriginal communities. These will be added to the 6,400 people already subject to the restrictions.

At the same time, Labor state governments in Queensland and WA initiated similar arrangements for some Aboriginal communities.

This system of "income management" is one of the most hated and most clearly racist aspects of the intervention.

Despite claims that the intervention was a response to rampant child sexual abuse, no new services have received funding. Instead $88 million has already been wasted administering this system where 50 per cent of all Centrelink payments to residents of "prescribed Aboriginal communities" is withheld.

Many women from these communities speak of the intense shame they feel at supermarkets where everyone else uses money, and the difficulty people have had queuing for hours with hundreds of others for ration cards, with many then missing out. They must spend the exact amount of money at a limited range of stores and cannot save, with any unspent money returning to the government.

Eileen Shaw, resident of Mt Nancy town camp, argues that "These laws are like apartheid South Africa... It's reintroducing the ration system from 50 years ago."

From their first employment by white bosses, Aboriginal people were deemed "unfit" to handle money. This was a very profitable arrangement that enabled millions of dollars of Aboriginal wages to be stolen, while the workers received demeaning amounts of "pocket money". When welfare payments were eventually extended to Aboriginal people, the same rip-off occurred, justified by the same "they can't be trusted to handle money" rhetoric.

Today, while Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin says attacking welfare payments is to deal with "bad parenting", the real issues for Aboriginal children go unaddressed.

The front page story of the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 February was about a remote NT community, Mulga Bore. The school has been shut for three weeks - and not because of truancy. There is no water. Toilets don't get flushed, children can't wash their hands before meals and dehydration leads to poor concentration.

But other problems also make the school unusable. Constant power breakdowns mean there is no air-conditioning in the classrooms. Two teachers wrestle with composite classes, one from preschool to year 6, the other up to year 12. Because they have to travel 100 kilometres each day, they teach only four days a week.

Rose Bird, one of the community's teachers' aides, said that now the school was shut, a teacher drove each day to deliver work sheets for the pupils to fill out. "Kids love school, but not much work gets done," she said.

But the story gets worse. The water, when it did flow, was so severely contaminated with nitrates that young children, babies and pregnant mothers were at serious risk.

Authorities have known about this for almost ten years and done nothing. It is so much easier and cheaper to blame the parents.

The continuing intervention into Aboriginal communities means communal land has been seized through five-year leases, with the dual aims of privatising housing and driving communities from the land. Attacks on people's already appallingly low standard of living - and on their human dignity - through welfare quarantining are being extended.

The Canberra convergence was the first significant demonstration demanding Rudd get rid of the Howard legacy. But it will not be the last.

Ten days after the demonstration, the construction union's National Conference endorsed this motion: "That the CFMEU demand the immediate repeal of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Legislation; we further demand that Federal, State and Territory Governments sit down and enter into respectful dialogue with Aboriginal people in their communities and then act alongside and in support of Aboriginal people in keeping with the ‘Little Children are Sacred' report."

Protests are being organised outside Centrelink offices on Thursday 13 March, a month after Rudd's apology. The National Aboriginal Alliance and local activist groups are planning national rallies on Saturday 21 June as the intervention enters its second year.