“The department’s history, traced in this disturbing, meticulously detailed and coolly impassioned book, provokes in the reader feelings of stupefaction, vexation and fascinated horror – a suite of responses by now all too familiar in our retrospect on the record of inter-racial affairs in this country… An archival book. It is also a book of sharp political significance.” Nicolas Rothwell, Weekend Australian

“A broad and penetrating study… Kidd’s book will be used extensively to prepare legal argument and to provide a critical road map for the comprehension of government policy.” Henry Reynolds, Sydney Morning Herald