The French reconnection with Australia
Macron’s Australian visit will highlight Western concerns about China’s growing influence in the Pacific.
It was 1995, mass protests were under way over French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia and this reporter was enjoying a first-class lunch with the French ambassador and his Sydney consular staff at what was then a splendid French restaurant in Woollahra, Pruniers.
The impression was that the French did not really take the public anger demonstrated by Australians and their government overly seriously. The French diplomats told a joke that with the ambassador being called in for a dressing down by Australia’s foreign minister with each atomic test, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had reserved a permanent parking spot for him.
Through the 1990s, while Australia, the US and the rest of the coalition of the willing were fighting Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime in Iraq or trying to keep him in check with a strict UN arms embargo between wars, the French continued secretly and illegally to sell him arms.
Not long before that, tensions were high in the 80s over France’s heavy-handed crackdown on violent Kanak independence activists in New Caledonia. When Kanaks murdered four French gendarmes and took others hostage on the island of Ouvea and kept them in a cave, the French broke the siege by military assault, killing 19 rebels, some allegedly summarily executed after they surrendered.
And while New Zealand disliked it even more, Australia was outraged in 1985 when French secret service agents blew up the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior, killing Portugal-born photographer Fernando Pereira.
Three decades on, the nuclear tests are long over and French military spooks Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur, who spent a short time on a French Pacific island paradise as “punishment” before returning to France for a series of promotions, are in their late 60s with their state-sponsored bombing days over.
New Caledonia, which is still French sovereign territory, mostly has been at peace for the past 30 years since a power-sharing agreement between Kanaks and whites was struck in 1988 and further adjusted in 1998, with the territory still under the tricolour but self-governing.
And relations between France and Australia are good.
France’s Naval Group is building 12 Shortfin Barracuda submarines for the Royal Australian Navy at a cost of $50 billion. A year ago the two countries entered an enhanced strategic partnership that includes annual defence minister meetings, and the year before that the governments signed an agreement to improve sharing of classified documents.
So when French President Emmanuel Macron arrives in Sydney today, it will be at a high point of goodwill between the two countries. There is, however, an element of plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose in Macron’s visit which, in the present climate of growing tension over China’s regional assertiveness, could work to Australia’s advantage.
The common theme running through the French nuclear tests, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and the fierce response to the Kanak independence push is that France likes to think of itself as a middle-ranking global and colonial nuclear power that has full charge of its own affairs. The rest of the world finds it arrogant, but it goes down well domestically and French leaders of all political persuasions have maintained the on-the-front-foot stance.
France has not given up any more of its empire since 1977 when its last mainland African colony, Djibouti, became independent, and it fiercely wants to hang on to what’s left, which is still a lot.
In the Pacific, France has three colonies covering hundreds of islands, from New Caledonia in the western Pacific to Polynesia in the east, with the small Wallis and Futuna in the middle. France regards itself as a Pacific power, and maintains a permanent military presence on its main possessions.
It’s notable, therefore, that Macron’s next port of call after Australia will be New Caledonia, where campaigning is heating up ahead of a referendum on independence in November. He will attend a ceremony on the 30th anniversary of the Ouvea Cave massacre.
France also maintains two colonies in the Indian Ocean, Mayotte and Reunion, including a naval presence. After Macron made a visit to India, the two countries signed a strategic co-operation agreement.
It’s all about strengthening military ties with like-minded countries of the region that can call themselves democracies, and showing that France still regards itself as having skin in the game as a player in the Indian and Pacific oceans, as China flexes its muscles.
So it’s not surprising that the rise of China will be high on the agenda in talks between Macron and Malcolm Turnbull.
Macron will deliver a speech to Australian and French military personnel at Sydney’s Garden Island naval base on “the role of the Franco-Australian partnership in strengthening the Indo-Pacific axis”.
Macron and the Prime Minister share quite a lot in common in terms of background, outlook and problematic polling.
Like Turnbull, who was a journalist, barrister and investment banker, Macron, 40, had more than one successful career before entering politics.
He’s well educated with a philosophy degree, a master’s of public affairs, and graduated from the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in 2004.
Macron was a senior public servant at the Inspectorate-General of Finances and later became an investment banker at Rothchilds.
Although he started off a member of the Socialist Party, as minister of economy, industry and digital affairs from 2014 he championed pro-business reforms.
He has taken on the unions, reforming the tight employment laws to make it easier to hire and fire workers.
But, in the same way Bill Shorten likes to paint Turnbull as a multi-millionaire, out-of-touch toff, critics of Macron accuse him of being “president of the rich”.
Macron has taken a tough line on illegal immigrants and promised to deport more of them, which is believed to have won him some of the right-wing voters previously loyal to the National Front.
But the hardline stance has put off some liberals, as has a proposal to bring back compulsory national military service, while farmers have expressed discontent with low produce prices.
Economic growth, which Macron, like Turnbull, says is the real game, along with jobs, is running at about 2 per cent, but somehow it does not seem to be producing traction in the electorate.
“The French are saying, ‘Employment is rising again, the economic indicators are good, but things aren’t any better for me,’ ” Brice Teinturier of the Ipsos market research firm told Britain’s The Telegraph recently.
As he heads towards the anniversary of his first year in office in a fortnight (May 14), Macron’s approval ratings have slumped below 50 per cent.
Also like Turnbull, Macron claims to be sanguine about his fluctuating popularity, saying “some people are obsessed by (opinion polls), but what really counts is the work in depth you are doing for the country”.
Macron has clear ambitions to be an influential world leader in international affairs. In Europe, he’s positioning to be the most dominant figure in a post-Brexit EU.
He has been working on a compromise on the Iran nuclear deal, urging Donald Trump not to abandon it as he is threatening to do, but proposes to extend it to other areas such as curbing Tehran’s terrorist proxy wars.
His good relationship with the US President has some calling him “the Trump whisperer”; notwithstanding the bizarre hand-holding and dandruff flicking behaviour of the leader of the free world, Macron’s just-completed visit to the US is widely regarded as a success. He firmly expressed disagreement on some issues but underscored the enduring long and strong ties between the two allies.
One expects Macron will likely strike an equally positive note in his generous three-day visit here, building on a roll the two countries have developed in recent years as Western democracies with shared values and strategic interests in this part of the world.
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Australia’s relationship with France
High points
April 26, 2016: Australia chooses France over Germany and Japan as its partner in the Future Submarine Program, placing a $50 billion order for 12 Shortfin Barracuda long-range subs made by France’s Naval Group
December 7, 2016: The Australian and French governments sign an agreement to improve classified document sharing
March last year: The Australian and French governments sign an enhanced strategic partnership that includes annual defence ministers’ meetings
April 25 this year: The $99.5 million Sir John Monash Centre is opened by Malcolm Turnbull and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe to honour the contribution of Diggers at Villers-Bretonneux in 1918
Low points
July 10, 1985: The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, preparing to sail to French Polynesia to protest against French nuclear testing, is hit by explosions in the Port of Auckland. Photographer Fernando Pereira is killed. French military secret agents Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart are captured by New Zealand Police and later admit they carried out the bombing
May 5, 1988: French gendarmes and a commando unit storm a cave on the island of Ouvea where Kanak independence activists have been holding French gendarmes, military personnel and a prosecutor. French forces kill 19 hostage takers, with allegations some were executed after they surrendered
1995-96: The French resume underground nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, leading to protests in Australia and other parts of the world and rioting in Tahiti
1990s: France’s corrupt dealings with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein continue with big secret arms sales to his regime, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the UN after the Persian Gulf war