CHECK AGAINST DELI. VERY EMBARGOED UINTIL, nDELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
HON R J L HAWKE
DELIVERED AT THE DINNER HOSTED BY
M. LOUIS LE PENSEC
MINISTER FOR OVERSEAS DEPARTMNENTS
AND TERRITORIES
NOUMEA 27 JULY 1990
At some stage every Australian ponders that great
unanswerable question of French and Australian history:
" What if La Perouse had arrived a few days earlier
How different things would be if La Perouse had beaten
Captain Cook, and if Australia had been claimed for France
rather than England.
One of the unintended consequences would have been that I
would not have needed an interpreter for my remarks tonight.
But of course, history could have taken other twists. In
some accounts of the history of New Caledonia, the tragic
figure of Captain Denham appears as a British version of La
Perouse, failing by only a couple of days, because he had
dallied in Sydney, to claim these islands for England.
So perhaps an interpreter would have been necessary anyway,
to allow my fluent French to be understood by my
New Caledonian audience of Anglophones.
Regardless of the language in which it is expressed, I trust
my gratitude for the warmth of your welcome this evening,
and for the generosity of your hospitality, is clear to you
all. As any map of our region shows, New Caledonia forms part of
the very closest circle of Australia's neighbours in the
South Pacific.
We stand on each other's doorsteps, with Canberra and Noumea
separated by only a few hours' flying time. For someone who
frequently flies greater distances without leaving
Australia, let me say it is a pleasure to realise on this
journey just how narrow, relatively speaking, is the stretch
of water that separates us from you.
It was our proximity of course that, during the dark days of
the Second World War, reminded Australians and New
Caledonians of our vital importance to each other.
That was why in 1940 exactly fifty years ago Australia
opened its consulate here in Noumea: the first diplomatic
post we established outside the United Kingdom and North
America. It is a little remembered fact that, in September 1940,
close cooperation between Australia and the Free French
leader General de Gaulle led to the installation of a Free
French governor in Noumea, allowing this territory to play a
vital role in the Allied war effort in the Pacific.
In the following year, Bob Menzies became the first
Australian Prime Minister to visit these shores.
Over the decades that followed, Australia and New Caledonia
did not, for a number of reasons, build the close ties that
the map suggests should have been automatic ties of trade,
cultural exchange, and political consultation that
flourished through much of the rest of the South Pacific.
Until today, Bob Menzies remained the only Australian Prime
Minister to visit New Caledonia.
Today however we can take pride and satisfaction from the
knowledge that we are opening a new chapter in the history
of relations between Australia and New Caledonia.
I want my visit to demonstrate a new recognition that
Australia and New Caledonia have much to offer each other,
and a commitment that for our part we are keen to see more
opportunities emerge.
We want to see more business men and women, more students,
more tourists, more artists crossing and recrossing that
stretch of water just like the neighbours we really are.
There are two, equally important, reasons why we can look
with confidence to these exciting prospects, and why I speak
with confidence about the opening of new chapters.
The first is the attainment here in New Caledonia of a
peaceful and orderly political process under the Matignon
Accords. At the outset of my visit I want to place on record the
unqualified admiration of the Australian Government for the
way in which New Caledonians and the French Government
worked together to reach and implement these Accords.
To someone with my vantage point, the peace and order that
has prevailed in New Caledonia since the Matignon Accords
were signed in June 1988, stand in the sharpest possible
contrast to the futile, dangerous and sometimes brutal
divisiveness of previous years.
For this triumph of common sense over senselessness, I
congratulate you all. And in particular I recall the work of
one of the fathers of this triumphant achievement, the late
Jean-Marie Tjibaou, whose assassination last year, with
Yeweine Yeweine, tragically robbed all New Caledonians of
men of vision and leadership.
Just as important as the process of reconciliation is its
end-point: in 1998, New Caledonians will be able to choose
their own future. Before Matignon, it seemed that this
choice would be denied them. It hardly needs adding that
Australia would have been uncomfortable with that denial.
A genuine act of self-determination is necessary not only
for the rights of the New Caledonian people but also for the
standing of New Caledonia in the eyes of the wider Pacific
community. With the Accords, New Caledonia has brought within its grasp
that which it most needed but which it had previously found
most elusive: a process for a peaceful transition to genuine
self-determination and to a viable long-term political
status. I will be speaking with the participants in the Accords
tomorrow and I will make some further comments specifically
to the New Caledonian community after that.
Tonight, as the guest of the French Minister M. Le Pensec, I
want to acknowledge the value we place on the French
contribution to this achievement not least the involvement
of my friend the Prime Minister Michel Rocard and Minister
Le Pensec, whose personal commitment to the Matignon Accords
has been a vital element in the success.
Indeed, from Australia's point of view, and surely from that
of New Caledonia, the political and legislative basis for
the peace and progress now being enjoyed in New Caledonia is
one of the great achievements of the Rocard Government.
And that of course brings me to the second reason for the
new chapter in Australia-New Caledonia relations: the fact
that, after some difficult times, relations between
Australia and France have once more attained the warmth and
fruitfulness that one could expect of two nations that share
so many fundamental values and aspirations.
My visit to Paris last year, and the very successful return
visit to Australia by M. Rocard, have confirmed that a new
spirit of cooperation exists between Australia and France
broad, strong, positive and productive.
In the wider international sphere, we are working together
in the search for peace in Cambodia, and taking the
initiative in seeking to ban mining from Antarctica so that
it can be preserved as a nature reserve and land of science.
Tonight, let me spend a few minutes reviewing how this new
spirit between Australia and France is felt here in the
South Pacific.
Because inevitably, Australia's view of France is
significantly affected by the prism of the South Pacific.
This is where we are; this is where our immediate interests
lie; this is where French decisions taken on the other side
of the globe will impact on us and on our neighbours.
No one could deny that France plays an important role
cultural, economic, political in the Pacific.
What has happened over the last two years is that we have
seen that role not just acknowledged but, increasingly,
welcomed by Australians and by all those who care for the
future of this region.
And the clearest proof of that tremendous transformation is
here in New Caledonia.
To anyone who might question whether France can play a
legitimate and constructive role in the Pacific, I now say:
look at its role in the Matignon Accords.
And indeed, one can point to a positive French role in wider
Pacific issues.
Last August, Prime Minister Rocard and I declared our
intention of working together on combatting the barbaric
practice of driftnet fishing reflecting the concerns that
had been expressed by the South Pacific Forum nations in the
Tarawa Declaration.
With the recent decision by Japan not to deploy driftnet
fishing vessels in the South Pacific in the coming season,
we are entitled to derive some collective satisfaction that
the Pacific view is gaining force.
I was pleased to see the statement of M. Rocard that
France's Pacific territories should develop closer links
with other South Pacific countries.
For Australia's part, we remain very keen to expand our
trade with New Caledonia and with the other French Pacific
territories. I hope this visit will remind New Caledonians that Australia
is a competitive supplier for many of the goods needed here
but that artificial trade barriers impede our capacity to
supply them, with consequent costs to the average consumer
here. Of course, there remain areas on which Australia and France
have firm differences.
Australia has opposed the French program of nuclear testing
and we will continue to protest against each test.
Put quite simply, there is no single decision France could
take that would lift its reputation higher throughout this
part of the world than to support the South Pacific Nuclear
Free Zone.
At the wider international level, Australia also has severe
disagreements with France and its fellow members of the EC
over the folly of agricultural protectionism an issue that
must, if we are not to threaten the entire structure of
world trade, be resolved in the current round of
Multilateral Trade Negotiations.
This is not some peripheral issue for my country but one
which is central to the health of our economy.
Such issues aside, the scope of cooperation between France
and Australia is expanding steadily, and I want it to go on
expanding. I am confident that is a shared objective.
We are finding an identity of view and a commonality of
purpose that promises many positive outcomes in the future.
It is our genuine desire that the sort of practical
cooperation that has marked our relationship over the past
two years here in the Pacific and more widely will
continue to diversify and to grow stronger.
So I certainly trust that New Caledonians won't have to wait
another fifty years for a third visit by an Australian Prime
Minister. I thank you for your generous hospitality and for
the warmth of your welcome.