PIM’s man under French fire

In his column En Direct in Le Courrier Australien in February, J. P. Zajac took a sideswipe at PIM and at associate editor Malcolm Salmon in particular.

Mr Zajac commented:

Although the He de Lumiere “affair” is already more than a month old, there is one droll aspect of the clownish farce. In Auckland the tale was being repeated endlessly, invariably winding up with paeans of praise for the legendary shrewdness of the Kiwi Cus toms men and, by clear implica tion, boundless scorn for the ineptitude of their Kangaroo counterparts.

In Sydney, Australian journalists hungry for informa tion and expert opinion could do no better than to call upon the sole expert on New Caledo nian affairs in the southern hemisphere, none other than Malcolm Salmon, well known for the delectable prose he serves up to us in the monthly

Pim.

Not content with thrashing the tricolore on Sydney televi sion’s Channel Nine, our emi nent colleague repeated the offence later on Channel Seven with all the bantering tone, the bluntness, and the rare fineness of judgment we have come to expect of him.

According to Mr Salmon the “weapons” found aboard the He de Lumiere could only have been destined for activists of the National Front (New Caledonia Section), a recently formed party which is still in the process of getting its act together.

Our “colleague” said “no one need worry about the RPCR, since it has had all the time in the world to get together whatever weapons it needs”.

Mr Salmon claimed that the illegal entry of arms and ammunition into New Caledo nia was largely “facilitated” by the clearly complaisant attitude of the territorial authorities, “and more particularly the police, where there is a strong current of opposition to the policies of the socialist govern

ment”.

This kind of talk might be all right around the bar of the neighborhood pub but not on television, in front of millions of gullible Australians, Mr Salmon.

Still more serious however was the way in which the expert on New Caledonian affairs ac cused the French community in Sydney of being licensed pur veyors of arms and munitions to the Noumean “white set tlers”.

There is something extremely provocative, thoughtless, not to say indecent, about making such charges on television in prime viewing time. Mr Salmon has never hidden where his sympathies lie; that much we knew. But it passes understan ding that he should be permit ted to appear on the small screen and hold forth in this way.

Malcolm Salmon writes; It’s notable that when Mr Zajac refers to the He de Lumiere “affair”, he uses quotation marks.

It’s almost as if 5500 rounds of ammunition and seven magazines were not found in the ship’s hold in Auckland, the ship’s cook was not arrested and charged and fined SNZIOOO after admitting the stuff was for sale on the black market in Noumea.

Those little quotation marks are as concise an expression as any of the state of paranoia which is gradually enveloping the French community in Aus tralia and, to a still greater extent, no doubt, given the Rainbow Warrior bombing, New Zealand.

First, the National Front. I did not say that the munitions could “only have been destined for activists of the National Front”. Channel Nine’s in terviewer asked me “If you were a French policeman work ing on this case, who would you want to talk to?” I said that the far-Right National Front would be an obvious group for in vestigation because, being re latively newly formed, and hav ing both the means and the will to purchase weapons, they seemed most likely to be in the business of stockpiling such

material.

As for the RPCR, I spoke on the authority of no less a figure than RPCR leader Roger Laro que, mayor of Noumea for 30 years and more who, just be fore his death in November last year, told the press; “Yes, we have weapons, and we will use them.”

I did not say the territorial authorities in New Caledonia “facilitated” the illegal arms traffic. On the contrary, I said I believed the French Govern ment was “doing its best” to stop it, but that it faced difficul ties due to the existence in the territory’s law enforcement sys tem of a current of resistance to the government’s policy. That remark I stand by.

The Channel Seven in terviewer asked who I thought might be responsible for organising the He de Lumiere munitions shipment. I said, of course, I didn’t know. But I added that one had to bear in mind that Sydney had a French community which was easily the largest in Australia.

It no doubt included people of various shades of opinion, including many ex-Caldoches who could easily have sym pathy for the anti-independ ence cause in the territory. Of “licensed purveyors of arms” and such nonsense 1 said not a word.

A final word; Mr Zajac’s hand-on-heart references to the tricolore should not mislead anyone into thinking he sup ports French Government poli cies on New Caledonia.

Another part of Mr Zajac’s column was an enthusiastic account of the “total success” of the “dead town” reception offered to France’s Minister for the Interior, Pierre Joxe, during his visit to the territory in January.

Noumea simply shut down, and none of the conservative political parties would meet the minister.

All this was fine with Mr Zajac, “even if two shiploads of tourists kept in their pockets the dollars they were getting ready to spend on Shalimar perfumes from Guerlain, or Hermes scarves”.