Last week, French president Francois Hollande made a flying visit to Australia and the French territory of New Caledonia. The interplay between France, Australia and neighbouring Pacific island nations has improved since the days of French nuclear testing and the armed conflict that divided New Caledonia in the 1980s. But behind the diplomatic bonhomie, there are looming decisions on self-determination and debate over France’s ongoing role in the Pacific.

After attending the G20 meeting in Brisbane, Hollande flew to New Caledonia for his first official visit. The island nation, one of Australia’s closest neighbours, is one of three French dependencies in the Pacific region. After a rushed program over 36 hours, Hollande returned to Sydney to begin the first ever state visit to Australia by a French president.

In recent years, successive ALP and Coalition governments have welcomed France’s ongoing colonial presence in the Pacific islands, presenting the French state as a force for stability in the region.

In 2012, then prime minister Kevin Rudd signed the Australia-France joint statement of strategic partnership, highlighting improved relations between the two countries. This policy reflects co-operation with France on the global stage (for counter-terrorism, non-proliferation and Nato operations), but also France’s contribution to regional maritime surveillance. The bipartisan support to keep the French government onside is driven in part by concern that French disengagement from the Pacific would increase Australia’s obligation to provide development assistance to newly independent states.

But as Hollande met Australian prime minister Tony Abbott in Canberra, there were some areas of tension between the socialist party leader and his conservative host – especially on climate policy.

During his visit to New Caledonia, Hollande and French foreign minister Laurent Fabius joined a high-level dialogue on climate change, attended by prime ministers and presidents from Vanuatu, Kiribati, Niue, Tuvalu and Cook Islands and diplomats from other Pacific nations.

The island leaders welcomed France’s role as host of crucial climate treaty negotiations to be held in Paris in December 2015 — one of the pillars of a global deal in Paris will be adequate and accessible climate finance for vulnerable countries. Last week, US president Barack Obama pledged $3 billion (Dh11 billion) to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a new global mechanism to respond to the ravages of climate change in developing countries. In Noumea, Hollande highlighted France’s recent €1 billion (Dh 4.6 billion) commitment to the fund.

The contrast with Canberra could not be sharper. Australia was co-chair of the GCF until October 2013, but at last year’s Commonwealth meeting in Sri Lanka, the incoming Abbott government announced that it would not contribute to the fund at this time. With another pledging round this week, Canberra is under diplomatic pressure to follow a range of developed countries — Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea — which have pledged resources.

Hollande’s fleeting visit to New Caledonia also highlighted another crucial challenge for the islands region – the decolonisation of the remaining dependent territories administered by France, Britain, the US and New Zealand.

France has colonies in every ocean of the world and Paris wants to retain a strategic foothold in the Asia-Pacific region through its presence in New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna.

In a major speech in Noumea, Hollande said that the French government will remain neutral between supporters and opponents of independence for New Caledonia, as they move towards a referendum on self-determination before the end of 2018. He stressed however that France would remain a Pacific power, welcomed by its neighbours: “That wasn’t always the case in past decades. But today, they ask us to remain present, because we can also help assure the future of the region.”

With the post-2008 financial crisis in Europe, there is growing discussion within the French state about the need to reduce spending in France’s overseas dependencies (each year Paris allocates some €2.5 billion to its Pacific territories). Key ministries however argue that French taxpayers must continue extensive funding to maintain France’s status as a mid-sized global power.

A February 2014 report by a French Senate commission argued that the Pacific should be an ongoing strategic focus:

“The exercise of our sovereignty over these vast stretches and the international competition we face are certainly a difficult cost to bear in this period of crisis. But this is an investment for the future, an historic opportunity for growth and expansion.”

For France, with its far-flung colonial empire, the UN convention on the law of the sea provides significant advantages. With overseas dependencies in the Pacific, Caribbean, Indian and Atlantic Oceans, France has the world’s second largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ), after the US. France has only 340,290 square kilometres of EEZ in Europe, but its overseas dependencies add 11m square kilometres worldwide, including more than 7million in the Pacific.

A recent Senate report highlights the importance of this maritime zone, both for sovereignty and for potential economic benefits:

“Thanks to its overseas possessions, France is one of the countries affected - indeed the most affected - by this revolution in sharing the oceans. Its EEZ is in fact the second largest behind that of the US and beyond this, the most diverse. Present in both hemispheres and at all points of the compass, the French EEZ is the only one on which the sun never sets”

New Caledonia holds an estimated 25 per cent of the world’s nickel reserves and in the eastern Pacific there are also significant seabed resources, which can be tapped with new technology. French corporation Technip is working with Nautilus Minerals to support seabed mining in waters off Papua New Guinea, while Total is partnering with Oil Search in exploration for hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Papua. Geoscience Australia and France’s Extraplac program have jointly explored international waters between Australia and New Caledonia, to determine the presence of a new petroleum reserve in the Capel and Faust basins.

A central focus of current Australia-France engagement is through military cooperation, especially for maritime surveillance in Pacific EEZs. The 2006 Australia-France Defence Co-Operation Agreement sets the framework for engagement through officer exchanges and joint military exercises like Southern Cross and Pitch Black.

Paris is also eager to extend Australian purchases of French military technology from corporations like Thales and Eurocopter, which have major investments in the Australian defence sector. In Australia, Hollande is accompanied by a major delegation of French business leaders and officials hope to expand the relatively limited trade between the two countries (Last year only 0.2 per cent of France’s principal imports came from Australia, which is ranked 53rd amongst all countries exporting to France).

Less publicised are common interests in cyberspace, intelligence and metadata collection. Like the ANZ US allies, France monitors satellite, internet and telecommunications from installations in the Pacific.

Last July, the French newspaper Le Monde reported on the signals intelligence programme run by the Direction generale de la securite exterieure (DGSE) — the French intelligence service best known in the islands for the 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Regional communications are monitored by an interception installation in New Caledonia which came into operation in 2006. This facility is located at the French military’s naval airbase at Tontouta (New Caledonia’s international airport, outside Noumea).

Pacific island governments have joined Australia to welcome improved relations with Paris since the end of nuclear testing and the signing of the 1998 Noumea Accord in New Caledonia. However while welcoming French commitments on aid and climate policy, many Pacific governments have remained active in their diplomatic support for self-determination in the region.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) is the key forum for support to independence movements in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. The sub-regional organisation, which links Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Front de Liberation Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), is currently chaired by a member of the Kanak independence coalition.

In 2013, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Nauru and other countries successfully proposed a resolution to the United Nations General Assembly for the relisting of French Polynesia on the UN list of non-self-governing territories.

This resolution opened the way for greater scrutiny of French Polynesia by the UN special committee on decolonisation, including the health and environmental impacts of 30 years of nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. French diplomats reacted angrily to the UN resolution and have refused to transmit information to the UN special committee, as required under the UN Charter.

Canberra and Paris are eager to cooperate on global issues like trade, the conflict in Ukraine and the war on Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), but this expanding friendship may soon clash with regional interests and relationships. The Australia-France strategic partnership will raise further debate as New Caledonia moves closer to a referendum on self-determination in the next few years.

—Guardian News & Media Ltd