{"id":36640,"date":"2018-01-03T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T19:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=36640"},"modified":"2018-01-03T09:02:39","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T22:02:39","slug":"national-archives-releases-part-3-france-south-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/national-archives-releases-part-3-france-south-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"The National Archives releases (part 3): France in the South Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The annual release of hitherto secret cabinet papers now takes us back to the last great Oz outbreak of Francophobia\u2014rage and fear about the French in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

The 1994 and 1995 cabinet records<\/a> show the Keating Labor government grappling with France resuming underground nuclear explosions in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

In 1995, France ended a three-year testing moratorium. The previous 150 tests apparently weren\u2019t enough. Having done a final round, Paris promised, it\u2019d then commit to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.<\/p>\n

Dreadful French process led to a positive outcome\u2014allowing France to become, eventually, a positive rather than a negative in South Pacific regionalism.<\/p>\n

The cabinet submission grappled with balancing the desirable CTBT end against dire boom-boom process, calling for Australia\u2019s response to be \u2018credible but proportionate\u2019. The tests, DFAT intoned, should not dominate the bilateral relationship.<\/p>\n

Walking that line, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was blown up by a wonderful question from John Shovelan, an ABC journo. The Shov missile was this: \u2018Are you saying that the French decision to go ahead, then, is not as bad as it could have been?\u2019 The missile exploded when Evans began his reply with \u2018Exactly\u2019. As Evans recalled in his memoirs<\/a>, that act of \u2018utterly unwise objectivity\u2019 unleashed a public\/political storm about complacency and compliance. \u2018All hell broke loose\u2019, Gareth wrote.<\/p>\n

Nuanced diplomacy is tough\u2014especially when people are exploding nukes.<\/p>\n

The archived history is a chance to point to ASPI\u2019s new report on Oz\u2013French relations<\/a>, and to share two tales of Oz politicians grappling with the French.<\/p>\n

Gough transforms wine <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Australian fear of what France was up to in the South Pacific in the 19th century was matched by the Francophobia frenzy over French atmospheric nuclear tests in the South Pacific from 1966 to 1974 (after which France started going boom underground).<\/p>\n

The wrangle prompted an informal Oz boycott of all things French\u2014no wine, no mustard. Australia\u2019s postal union interrupted mail to and from France and its Pacific territories. This postal foreign policy was dismissed as \u2018maverick action\u2019 by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Gough\u2019s best barb was that if the tests at Mururoa were so safe, then they \u2018should be conducted in French islands closer to France, such as Corsica, Guadeloupe or Martinique\u2019.<\/p>\n

The boycott of French products produced one of the many Whitlam anecdotes\u2014as always with Gough at centre stage, delivering imperious lines with sonorous irony. This is from journalist Geoffrey Barker, who travelled with The Age <\/em>editor, Graham Perkin, to Kirribilli House for lunch with Whitlam. As the meal began, several bottles of French wine were presented to the PM.<\/p>\n

\u2018Jesus, Gough\u2019, protested Perkin, \u2018you can\u2019t drink French wine\u2019. \u2018Never fear, comrade\u2019, replied Gough, \u2018as it passes my lips it becomes Australian\u2019.<\/p>\n

Gareth: parlez vous Franglais?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1991, I flew into Noumea with Evans, who was making a tour of the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

Things were looking up between France and Australia. The Matignon Agreements<\/a> were three years old and New Caledonia was calm. The tragic assassination of Jean-Marie Tjibaou two years earlier had shocked all sides and the talk was of a peace process moving steadily away from the cycle of conflict. Evans spoke of a new era in relations, making a point of visiting Tjibaou\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n

New Caledonia\u2019s governor marked the visit by announcing that the tariff on Australian cheeses would be scrapped. The French accepting Oz cheese: talk about normalisation!<\/p>\n

The cream of Noumean society gathered for dinner in the grand ballroom of the governor\u2019s mansion. Among the 400 guests there were plenty of Kanaks, but the majority were Caledoche or those on postings from metropolitan France. It wasn\u2019t exactly a friendly audience.<\/p>\n

Everyone had eaten and supped well (plenty of French cheese to finish) when Evans rose to speak. He launched into a story of first seeing Paris as a backpacking student in the 1960s. Then he attempted the joke.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d asked a Parisian the way to the station: la gare<\/em>. The icy response was that the war was in Vietnam. Driving home his jest, Gareth explained that in his Franglais, he\u2019d said la guerre<\/em>, not la gare<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Granted this is not in the same league as Bob Hawke telling a room of Japanese executives that Australia would not play \u2018funny buggers\u2019 with them over trade issues, which was translated into Japanese as Australia not threatening to be \u2018laughing homosexuals\u2019. Even so, after several glasses of wine, the Gareth mocking his own language skills deserved a polite titter.<\/p>\n

Non. None.<\/p>\n

In that room of 400, there wasn\u2019t a sound. Cold, hard silence. How dare this foreign minister from a country that had only just produced acceptable cheese make light of the glorious French language.\u00a0The stillness in the room lasted until the small band of Australians escaped into the night.<\/p>\n

Not often did Gareth\u2019s department (or journalists) feel much sympathy for the driven and demanding foreign minister; the sigh, \u2018Earth to Gareth\u2019 was often heard around DFAT. Yet that moment of pain in Noumea lingered in the mind.<\/p>\n

Thus it was that when France restarted nuclear tests, DFAT had an inspired idea\u2014or hallucination\u2014about Australia ramming home its anger.<\/p>\n

To give France the maximum pain, Gareth should immediately fly to Paris and deliver Australia\u2019s protest in an hour-long speech. All in French! Strangely, it never reached the minister …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual release of hitherto secret cabinet papers now takes us back to the last great Oz outbreak of Francophobia\u2014rage and fear about the French in the South Pacific. The 1994 and 1995 cabinet records …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":36642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[601,291,2109,99],"class_list":["post-36640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-france","tag-national-archives","tag-south-pacific"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe National Archives releases (part 3): France in the South Pacific | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/national-archives-releases-part-3-france-south-pacific\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The National Archives releases (part 3): France in the South Pacific | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The annual release of hitherto secret cabinet papers now takes us back to the last great Oz outbreak of Francophobia\u2014rage and fear about the French in the South Pacific. 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