Noel Pearson’s Mission is Review’s Book of the Year
There is no public figure as important as Noel Pearson, and there are no problems more urgent than those he wishes to tackle.
The Weekend Australian’s Books pages Book of the Year is Noel Pearson’s Mission. The reason is simple: there is no public figure as important as Pearson, and there are no problems more urgent than those he wishes to tackle.
The book is gorgeously presented, with a lemon-yellow cover - yellow being the colour of hope. The book’s heft attests to its seriousness.
Mission tells one story – our story – in a series of essays and speeches, crafted by Pearson over the course of his life. As a writer, he is fluid, engaging and intelligent. In person – well, anyone can tell you this, but he is quite something to encounter when furious.
Which is often. And with good reason.
He can also be shy, and funny.
His voice in these pages and in person is beautiful. We should listen to it. His ideas are complex, his solutions creative, and expensive. And not beyond us.
There are admonitions in this book. There are memories. Pearson recalls trying to breathe life into his father as he lay dead on the floor of the fibro house he built for his family in Hope Vale. He still feels sorrow.
He admits his own mistakes.
“My choices on the crossroads of my life’s work were not always right,” he says. He answers this big question: “Why didn’t you go into politics?”
“At 23, I chose to serve my people,” he explains.
“At 33, I should have tried the political path to power, but I hesitated. I did not yet possess the self-belief.”
There was another opportunity when he was 42, “but I had blinkers on my vision.
“I thought we still could achieve the things we wanted without the diversions of politics,” he says.
Also, compared to the work he was doing, “what does a politician do, for f--k’s sake?”
Not enough. We can say that.
He canvasses the gridlock, the poisonous blauwdruk, the political schema, and the material interests with which he has collided.
But this is not a pessimistic book.
Pearson notes that the Australian story is magnificent. It comprises 60,000 years of careful environmental management by hunter-gatherer people.
Then we have the arrival of the British, and the subsequent waves of migration.
Now see where we all stand – and oh, how close are we to glory?
Except that this nation has a wound that runs from cape to bight, staining what should be pride in our achievements. We know – we’ve always known – that there were already people here when the British arrived. That they stand here still, insisting upon recognition, represents the best shot we’ve got at saving our own souls.
We should take that shot.
This problem must be solved. Shame on us, if we hand it onto our children, like some festering mucilage, to slip also through their fingers, from one generation in denial to the next.
Noel Pearson made at age 23 a commitment to his people, and to this country: to serve, to strive, to improve. Mission. This has been his life’s work. This is our Book of the Year.
Caroline Overington is The Australian’s Literary Editor
