New Caledonia riots

[lfromnj]

Natives want to be independent but demand France keep funding them
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/violence-in-new-caledonia-subsides-slightly-as-france-sends-reinforcements-for-security/ar-BB1mzcdJ?ocid=BingNewsSearch

If they can't get independence they demand voting restrictions for French immigrants despite the fact they can fully immigrate to France and vote there.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I stand with the Macron administration against Kanak blood-and-soil ethnic supremacism.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is a deeply concerning and saddening situation. I have family living in New Caledonia and above all I want them to be safe and secure.

As far as how we got to this point, there is plenty of blame to go around. Certainly the independentist position is becoming increasingly untenable after losing three referendums and with a growing share of residents being disenfranchised under the Noumea Accords. Still, at the end of the day the French state is in no position to just bowl over Kanaks' legitimate fears of being increasingly marginalized in their own lands, and there has to be a comprehensive solution to longstanding postcolonial dynamics. These issues aren't going to be solved by deploying the army or banning TikTok, and it's high time the incompetent blowhards in government take a page from Rocard and Jospin and actually take the effort to negotiate a compromise everyone can live with. This situation is too serious to think about it in slogans.

[parochial boy]

This is a deeply concerning and saddening situation. I have family living in New Caledonia and above all I want them to be safe and secure.

As far as how we got to this point, there is plenty of blame to go around. Certainly the independentist position is becoming increasingly untenable after losing three referendums and with a growing share of residents being disenfranchised under the Noumea Accords. Still, at the end of the day the French state is in no position to just bowl over Kanaks' legitimate fears of being increasingly marginalized in their own lands, and there has to be a comprehensive solution to longstanding postcolonial dynamics. These issues aren't going to be solved by deploying the army or banning TikTok, and it's high time the incompetent blowhards in government take a page from Rocard and Jospin and actually take the effort to negotiate a compromise everyone can live with. This situation is too serious to think about it in slogans.

I think that’s sort of the thing though, that you can’t all the third referendum a legitimate democratic excercise. Macron and Guerini rushed it through to get it out of the way as quick as possible, without going through the necessary consultation with the interested parties. As a result of which the independentists boycotted it, feeing somewhat understandably that they were not being given a fair hearing and a result they do not feel that the Nouméa process is complete.

Of course updating the electoral register is a democratic necessity, and it was always supposed to happen post Nouméa. But if Macron had actually gone into this process without his entirely predictable sense of entitled ignorance and high minded contempt and seen Noumea through rather than pissing all over the process then we wouldn’t be here right now.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is a deeply concerning and saddening situation. I have family living in New Caledonia and above all I want them to be safe and secure.

As far as how we got to this point, there is plenty of blame to go around. Certainly the independentist position is becoming increasingly untenable after losing three referendums and with a growing share of residents being disenfranchised under the Noumea Accords. Still, at the end of the day the French state is in no position to just bowl over Kanaks' legitimate fears of being increasingly marginalized in their own lands, and there has to be a comprehensive solution to longstanding postcolonial dynamics. These issues aren't going to be solved by deploying the army or banning TikTok, and it's high time the incompetent blowhards in government take a page from Rocard and Jospin and actually take the effort to negotiate a compromise everyone can live with. This situation is too serious to think about it in slogans.

I think that’s sort of the thing though, that you can’t all the third referendum a legitimate democratic excercise. Macron and Guerini rushed it through to get it out of the way as quick as possible, without going through the necessary consultation with the interested parties. As a result of which the independentists boycotted it, feeing somewhat understandably that they were not being given a fair hearing and a result they do not feel that the Nouméa process is complete.

Of course updating the electoral register is a democratic necessity, and it was always supposed to happen post Nouméa. But if Macron had actually gone into this process without his entirely predictable sense of entitled ignorance and high minded contempt and seen Noumea through rather than pissing all over the process then we wouldn’t be here right now.

Oh for sure, the government made a huge blunder rushing the last referendum, in typical FBM fashion. But at the end of the day the boycott was the independentists' choice, and I think it was also a huge mistake. There was no reason not to fight it out, especially with how close 2020 had been. I hate to have a "both sides" commentary but the situation is nuanced and serious enough that I am willing to say both sides need to do better here.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, just boycotting the referendum never looked likely to work.

[Storr]

France accuses Azerbaijan of foamening riots in New Caledonia

"Speaking to POLITICO, a French intelligence official granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues of national security, said that “we’ve detected activities from Russia and Azerbaijan in New Caledonia for weeks, even a few months. They’re pushing the narrative of France being a colonialist state.”"

"Azerbaijan has even founded the Baku Initiative Group, bringing together 14 political movements across the former French Empire in the name of decolonization. The group issued a statement Thursday in which they accused Paris of “infringing upon the Kanak people’s right to self-determination by expanding the electorate to keep them a minority in their own homeland.”"

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

France accuses Azerbaijan of foamening riots in New Caledonia

"Speaking to POLITICO, a French intelligence official granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues of national security, said that “we’ve detected activities from Russia and Azerbaijan in New Caledonia for weeks, even a few months. They’re pushing the narrative of France being a colonialist state.”"

"Azerbaijan has even founded the Baku Initiative Group, bringing together 14 political movements across the former French Empire in the name of decolonization. The group issued a statement Thursday in which they accused Paris of “infringing upon the Kanak people’s right to self-determination by expanding the electorate to keep them a minority in their own homeland.”"

This spinoff of Caucusus Wars: Fear and Loathing in Between the Black and Caspian has such crazy storylines.

[CumbrianLefty]

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but why exactly would Azerbaijan get involved in Pacific politics?

[Storr]

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but why exactly would Azerbaijan get involved in Pacific politics?

Because it's mad at France for supporting Armenia.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but why exactly would Azerbaijan get involved in Pacific politics?

Because it's mad at France for supporting Armenia.

Tit-for-tat, so it's called.

[Wiswylfen]

Azerbaijan is really making an effort to outdo its genocidal ally in the ankle-biter rankings. It's like North Korea supporting AREMA except ten times as stupid.

[Open Source Intelligence]

France accuses Azerbaijan of foamening riots in New Caledonia

"Speaking to POLITICO, a French intelligence official granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues of national security, said that “we’ve detected activities from Russia and Azerbaijan in New Caledonia for weeks, even a few months. They’re pushing the narrative of France being a colonialist state.”"

"Azerbaijan has even founded the Baku Initiative Group, bringing together 14 political movements across the former French Empire in the name of decolonization. The group issued a statement Thursday in which they accused Paris of “infringing upon the Kanak people’s right to self-determination by expanding the electorate to keep them a minority in their own homeland.”"

This spinoff of Caucusus Wars: Fear and Loathing in Between the Black and Caspian has such crazy storylines.

Was always under the impression the foreign state that stirred things up in New Caledonia was China.

[Antonio the Sixth]

So Macron visited New Caledonia yesterday and agreed to postpone the electoral reform in order to give space for negotiation. He also won't prolong the state of emergency, and has said some performative stuff about reining in inflation but hasn't really announced anything tangible. Since then one more person died, bringing the total death toll to 7 so far. An appeal to stop the TikTok ban was also rejected by the Council of State.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Azerbaijan is really making an effort to outdo its genocidal ally in the ankle-biter rankings. It's like North Korea supporting AREMA except ten times as stupid.

Which one?

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

Colonialism is so passé, France should get out of New Caledonia the same way it got out of Algeria. The truth of the matter is that this all goes back to De Gaulle stripping the territories of much of their local autonomy and planned further moves towards self-governance while systemically encouraging migration from the mainland to artificially grow a power base.

I don't quite know what else to say, I will always err on the side of the indigenous peoples and while I don't believe that militancy would be helpful, nor successful, and that especially any French people who have been there now for decades should have rights it's obvious the Kanak have legitimate grievance's and French colonialism has always been particularly insidious in this manner by trying to replace the natives.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Colonialism is so passé, France should get out of New Caledonia the same way it got out of Algeria. The truth of the matter is that this all goes back to De Gaulle stripping the territories of much of their local autonomy and planned further moves towards self-governance while systemically encouraging migration from the mainland to artificially grow a power base.

New Caledonia does have considerable autonomy following the Nouméa Accords (although I would be in full support of further autonomy as part of a broader negotiation on the island's future). It's also not a colony in the political sense, as its inhabitants are fully enfranchised and represented in France's institutions (disenfranchisement in local elections is the issue at hand, and the people affected by it are people who moved to the island in the past 26 years, so mostly people of European descent). Its socioeconomic structure is still marked by the impact of colonization, but these are not the kinds of issues that could be resolved with independence (unless you also want mass ethnic cleansing to go along with it, which seems a bit iffy to me personally). Fundamentally what New Caledonia needs most of all right now is economic support and an ambitious public investment policy to move past the extraction economy and redistribute resources. Of course I don't expect a neoliberal like Macron to do any of that, but I also don't think an independent New Caledonia/Kanaky to have the resources to do that either (unless they become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which carries its own serious downsides...).

[Damocles]

France did nothing wrong.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Fundamentally what New Caledonia needs most of all right now is economic support and an ambitious public investment policy to move past the extraction economy and redistribute resources. Of course I don't expect a neoliberal like Macron to do any of that, but I also don't think an independent New Caledonia/Kanaky to have the resources to do that either (unless they become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which carries its own serious downsides...).

Transitioning to what though, a tourist centric economy? Because that's their only other productive sector of the economy, and I don't think the Kanak leaders want to go down the path of whoring away their culture to attract top tourist dollars.
Instructively, Bougainville's independence leaders have been pushing very hard for reopening and expanding their gold mine, only with the royalties to stay on the island instead of funnelling into Port Moresby. There simply isn't another way for them to generate investment.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fundamentally what New Caledonia needs most of all right now is economic support and an ambitious public investment policy to move past the extraction economy and redistribute resources. Of course I don't expect a neoliberal like Macron to do any of that, but I also don't think an independent New Caledonia/Kanaky to have the resources to do that either (unless they become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which carries its own serious downsides...).

Transitioning to what though, a tourist centric economy? Because that's their only other productive sector of the economy, and I don't think the Kanak leaders want to go down the path of whoring away their culture to attract top tourist dollars.
Instructively, Bougainville's independence leaders have been pushing very hard for reopening and expanding their gold mine, only with the royalties to stay on the island instead of funnelling into Port Moresby. There simply isn't another way for them to generate investment.

Well, what you're outlining a big part of why I don't think it's a good idea for New Caledonia to seek independence. I'm not saying they should stop exporting nickel altogether, and of course profits from such exports should go to the island (iirc they already mostly do following the Nouméa accords), but commodities exports are famously an unreliable revenue source, and one that creates a lot of perverse economic effects. You see that even in large, diverse countries like much of Latin America, and it'd be even worse on a small island in the middle of the Pacific. Being part of a large, economically diversified country can help mitigate those issues in a variety of ways. And as far as what the alternatives are, I'm not an economist but I don't see why tourism is the only sector that could be developed. I'm sure there are avenues of development in manufacturing or in locally-oriented services, given enough political will.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Fundamentally what New Caledonia needs most of all right now is economic support and an ambitious public investment policy to move past the extraction economy and redistribute resources. Of course I don't expect a neoliberal like Macron to do any of that, but I also don't think an independent New Caledonia/Kanaky to have the resources to do that either (unless they become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which carries its own serious downsides...).

Transitioning to what though, a tourist centric economy? Because that's their only other productive sector of the economy, and I don't think the Kanak leaders want to go down the path of whoring away their culture to attract top tourist dollars.
Instructively, Bougainville's independence leaders have been pushing very hard for reopening and expanding their gold mine, only with the royalties to stay on the island instead of funnelling into Port Moresby. There simply isn't another way for them to generate investment.

Well, what you're outlining a big part of why I don't think it's a good idea for New Caledonia to seek independence. I'm not saying they should stop exporting nickel altogether, and of course profits from such exports should go to the island (iirc they already mostly do following the Nouméa accords), but commodities exports are famously an unreliable revenue source, and one that creates a lot of perverse economic effects. You see that even in large, diverse countries like much of Latin America, and it'd be even worse on a small island in the middle of the Pacific. Being part of a large, economically diversified country can help mitigate those issues in a variety of ways. And as far as what the alternatives are, I'm not an economist but I don't see why tourism is the only sector that could be developed. I'm sure there are avenues of development in manufacturing or in locally-oriented services, given enough political will.

Yes absolutely, when it comes to resource wealth for every Botswana there's a Nauru.
The obstacle to development across all the pacific islands is the astronomical cost of shipping from the low demand and high distances, which continues to make export driven manufacturing beyond uneconomical (this even applies to manufacturing in Australia and NZ to a lesser extent), and exports are limited to resources that have enough demand and economies of scale to be economical.
One of the few opportunities for new foreign investment are digital nomads, and they haven't exactly been a good deal in places like Portugal.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fundamentally what New Caledonia needs most of all right now is economic support and an ambitious public investment policy to move past the extraction economy and redistribute resources. Of course I don't expect a neoliberal like Macron to do any of that, but I also don't think an independent New Caledonia/Kanaky to have the resources to do that either (unless they become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which carries its own serious downsides...).

Transitioning to what though, a tourist centric economy? Because that's their only other productive sector of the economy, and I don't think the Kanak leaders want to go down the path of whoring away their culture to attract top tourist dollars.
Instructively, Bougainville's independence leaders have been pushing very hard for reopening and expanding their gold mine, only with the royalties to stay on the island instead of funnelling into Port Moresby. There simply isn't another way for them to generate investment.

Well, what you're outlining a big part of why I don't think it's a good idea for New Caledonia to seek independence. I'm not saying they should stop exporting nickel altogether, and of course profits from such exports should go to the island (iirc they already mostly do following the Nouméa accords), but commodities exports are famously an unreliable revenue source, and one that creates a lot of perverse economic effects. You see that even in large, diverse countries like much of Latin America, and it'd be even worse on a small island in the middle of the Pacific. Being part of a large, economically diversified country can help mitigate those issues in a variety of ways. And as far as what the alternatives are, I'm not an economist but I don't see why tourism is the only sector that could be developed. I'm sure there are avenues of development in manufacturing or in locally-oriented services, given enough political will.

Yes absolutely, when it comes to resource wealth for every Botswana there's a Nauru.
The obstacle to development across all the pacific islands is the astronomical cost of shipping from the low demand and high distances, which continues to make export driven manufacturing beyond uneconomical (this even applies to manufacturing in Australia and NZ to a lesser extent), and exports are limited to resources that have enough demand and economies of scale to be economical.
One of the few opportunities for new foreign investment are digital nomads, and they haven't exactly been a good deal in places like Portugal.

That makes sense, yeah. My point is that this all makes public investment all the more important. Like, to be blunt, if the free market can't provide New Caledonians with a decent standard of living, we need a state that's actually willing to foot the bill. And it's not just about social welfare, although that has to be a part of it, but the state can (and already does) create employment opportunities, and a robust public sector that can be funded out of the revenue pool of a large European country is probably a lifesaver for New Caledonia's economy. There is of course an issue with most state workers being of French origin, and I think hiring quotas for Kanaks is the sort of thing that has to be on the table here, but either way, I think this comes closer to a solution than anything else I've come across.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Fundamentally what New Caledonia needs most of all right now is economic support and an ambitious public investment policy to move past the extraction economy and redistribute resources. Of course I don't expect a neoliberal like Macron to do any of that, but I also don't think an independent New Caledonia/Kanaky to have the resources to do that either (unless they become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which carries its own serious downsides...).

Transitioning to what though, a tourist centric economy? Because that's their only other productive sector of the economy, and I don't think the Kanak leaders want to go down the path of whoring away their culture to attract top tourist dollars.
Instructively, Bougainville's independence leaders have been pushing very hard for reopening and expanding their gold mine, only with the royalties to stay on the island instead of funnelling into Port Moresby. There simply isn't another way for them to generate investment.

Well, what you're outlining a big part of why I don't think it's a good idea for New Caledonia to seek independence. I'm not saying they should stop exporting nickel altogether, and of course profits from such exports should go to the island (iirc they already mostly do following the Nouméa accords), but commodities exports are famously an unreliable revenue source, and one that creates a lot of perverse economic effects. You see that even in large, diverse countries like much of Latin America, and it'd be even worse on a small island in the middle of the Pacific. Being part of a large, economically diversified country can help mitigate those issues in a variety of ways. And as far as what the alternatives are, I'm not an economist but I don't see why tourism is the only sector that could be developed. I'm sure there are avenues of development in manufacturing or in locally-oriented services, given enough political will.

Yes absolutely, when it comes to resource wealth for every Botswana there's a Nauru.
The obstacle to development across all the pacific islands is the astronomical cost of shipping from the low demand and high distances, which continues to make export driven manufacturing beyond uneconomical (this even applies to manufacturing in Australia and NZ to a lesser extent), and exports are limited to resources that have enough demand and economies of scale to be economical.
One of the few opportunities for new foreign investment are digital nomads, and they haven't exactly been a good deal in places like Portugal.

That makes sense, yeah. My point is that this all makes public investment all the more important. Like, to be blunt, if the free market can't provide New Caledonians with a decent standard of living, we need a state that's actually willing to foot the bill. And it's not just about social welfare, although that has to be a part of it, but the state can (and already does) create employment opportunities, and a robust public sector that can be funded out of the revenue pool of a large European country is probably a lifesaver for New Caledonia's economy. There is of course an issue with most state workers being of French origin, and I think hiring quotas for Kanaks is the sort of thing that has to be on the table here, but either way, I think this comes closer to a solution than anything else I've come across.

100% agreed, strong government intervention is the consistent thread of the most successful developing countries (Botswana, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Singapore all demonstrating different paths of intervention). Being dependent on the whims of the French president does rather impede this though. For starters, New Caledonia’s enormous public service clearly isn’t funded out of kindness of Bercy, and hiring Kanaks would defeat the pretty blatant purpose of the system. Hell Macron’s voting reforms have dropped any facade of the strategy at play.

I really don’t think Paris has any interest in governing cooperatively with the Kanaks, yet alone bringing them into economic prosperity. They don’t see any benefit to the French state from it. Either they want to steamroll and marginalise them once and for all and build their own little fiefdom in the South Pacific like Tahiti, or if that fails they can have their independence and bugger off and try and find their own way (while the Noumea middle class presumably decamps back to the Metropolitan and becomes the modern pied noirs).

Maybe Melenchon would radically change France’s exploitative foreign and colonial policies, but that ship seems to have sailed.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fundamentally what New Caledonia needs most of all right now is economic support and an ambitious public investment policy to move past the extraction economy and redistribute resources. Of course I don't expect a neoliberal like Macron to do any of that, but I also don't think an independent New Caledonia/Kanaky to have the resources to do that either (unless they become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which carries its own serious downsides...).

Transitioning to what though, a tourist centric economy? Because that's their only other productive sector of the economy, and I don't think the Kanak leaders want to go down the path of whoring away their culture to attract top tourist dollars.
Instructively, Bougainville's independence leaders have been pushing very hard for reopening and expanding their gold mine, only with the royalties to stay on the island instead of funnelling into Port Moresby. There simply isn't another way for them to generate investment.

Well, what you're outlining a big part of why I don't think it's a good idea for New Caledonia to seek independence. I'm not saying they should stop exporting nickel altogether, and of course profits from such exports should go to the island (iirc they already mostly do following the Nouméa accords), but commodities exports are famously an unreliable revenue source, and one that creates a lot of perverse economic effects. You see that even in large, diverse countries like much of Latin America, and it'd be even worse on a small island in the middle of the Pacific. Being part of a large, economically diversified country can help mitigate those issues in a variety of ways. And as far as what the alternatives are, I'm not an economist but I don't see why tourism is the only sector that could be developed. I'm sure there are avenues of development in manufacturing or in locally-oriented services, given enough political will.

Yes absolutely, when it comes to resource wealth for every Botswana there's a Nauru.
The obstacle to development across all the pacific islands is the astronomical cost of shipping from the low demand and high distances, which continues to make export driven manufacturing beyond uneconomical (this even applies to manufacturing in Australia and NZ to a lesser extent), and exports are limited to resources that have enough demand and economies of scale to be economical.
One of the few opportunities for new foreign investment are digital nomads, and they haven't exactly been a good deal in places like Portugal.

That makes sense, yeah. My point is that this all makes public investment all the more important. Like, to be blunt, if the free market can't provide New Caledonians with a decent standard of living, we need a state that's actually willing to foot the bill. And it's not just about social welfare, although that has to be a part of it, but the state can (and already does) create employment opportunities, and a robust public sector that can be funded out of the revenue pool of a large European country is probably a lifesaver for New Caledonia's economy. There is of course an issue with most state workers being of French origin, and I think hiring quotas for Kanaks is the sort of thing that has to be on the table here, but either way, I think this comes closer to a solution than anything else I've come across.

100% agreed, strong government intervention is the consistent thread of the most successful developing countries (Botswana, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Singapore all demonstrating different paths of intervention). Being dependent on the whims of the French president does rather impede this though. For starters, New Caledonia’s enormous public service clearly isn’t funded out of kindness of Bercy, and hiring Kanaks would defeat the pretty blatant purpose of the system. Hell Macron’s voting reforms have dropped any facade of the strategy at play.

I really don’t think Paris has any interest in governing cooperatively with the Kanaks, yet alone bringing them into economic prosperity. They don’t see any benefit to the French state from it. Either they want to steamroll and marginalise them once and for all and build their own little fiefdom in the South Pacific like Tahiti, or if that fails they can have their independence and bugger off and try and find their own way (while the Noumea middle class presumably decamps back to the Metropolitan and becomes the modern pied noirs).

Maybe Melenchon would radically change France’s exploitative foreign and colonial policies, but that ship seems to have sailed.

This is a massive oversimplification. The French state obviously has a vested interest in keeping hold of New Caledonia, and for a long time its strategy for doing so was essentially settler colonialism, but from the 80s on it became clear that this strategy would result in a Northern Ireland-style state of permanent low-intensity civil war. At that point there was a very clear choice made by Rocard to not go down that path, and instead to actually open a dialog with the Kanak population and take their demands into account. This process didn't go far enough in my opinion, but it undeniably held firm, through 4 presidents and 13 prime ministers. Things have gotten significantly better since 1988, and if it weren't for Macron's idiotic dealing with the third and final referendum (which would probably have been another narrow but clear victory for staying within France) it could have continued forward. There is a very clear path for New Caledonia to remain within France in a way most Kanaks can accept and even be happy with, and what's standing in the way isn't some kind of nefarious plot from Paris to eradicate them. It's good old fashioned centralist boneheadedness and economic neoliberalism.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Fundamentally what New Caledonia needs most of all right now is economic support and an ambitious public investment policy to move past the extraction economy and redistribute resources. Of course I don't expect a neoliberal like Macron to do any of that, but I also don't think an independent New Caledonia/Kanaky to have the resources to do that either (unless they become a de facto Chinese protectorate, which carries its own serious downsides...).

Transitioning to what though, a tourist centric economy? Because that's their only other productive sector of the economy, and I don't think the Kanak leaders want to go down the path of whoring away their culture to attract top tourist dollars.
Instructively, Bougainville's independence leaders have been pushing very hard for reopening and expanding their gold mine, only with the royalties to stay on the island instead of funnelling into Port Moresby. There simply isn't another way for them to generate investment.

Well, what you're outlining a big part of why I don't think it's a good idea for New Caledonia to seek independence. I'm not saying they should stop exporting nickel altogether, and of course profits from such exports should go to the island (iirc they already mostly do following the Nouméa accords), but commodities exports are famously an unreliable revenue source, and one that creates a lot of perverse economic effects. You see that even in large, diverse countries like much of Latin America, and it'd be even worse on a small island in the middle of the Pacific. Being part of a large, economically diversified country can help mitigate those issues in a variety of ways. And as far as what the alternatives are, I'm not an economist but I don't see why tourism is the only sector that could be developed. I'm sure there are avenues of development in manufacturing or in locally-oriented services, given enough political will.

Yes absolutely, when it comes to resource wealth for every Botswana there's a Nauru.
The obstacle to development across all the pacific islands is the astronomical cost of shipping from the low demand and high distances, which continues to make export driven manufacturing beyond uneconomical (this even applies to manufacturing in Australia and NZ to a lesser extent), and exports are limited to resources that have enough demand and economies of scale to be economical.
One of the few opportunities for new foreign investment are digital nomads, and they haven't exactly been a good deal in places like Portugal.

That makes sense, yeah. My point is that this all makes public investment all the more important. Like, to be blunt, if the free market can't provide New Caledonians with a decent standard of living, we need a state that's actually willing to foot the bill. And it's not just about social welfare, although that has to be a part of it, but the state can (and already does) create employment opportunities, and a robust public sector that can be funded out of the revenue pool of a large European country is probably a lifesaver for New Caledonia's economy. There is of course an issue with most state workers being of French origin, and I think hiring quotas for Kanaks is the sort of thing that has to be on the table here, but either way, I think this comes closer to a solution than anything else I've come across.

100% agreed, strong government intervention is the consistent thread of the most successful developing countries (Botswana, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Singapore all demonstrating different paths of intervention). Being dependent on the whims of the French president does rather impede this though. For starters, New Caledonia’s enormous public service clearly isn’t funded out of kindness of Bercy, and hiring Kanaks would defeat the pretty blatant purpose of the system. Hell Macron’s voting reforms have dropped any facade of the strategy at play.

I really don’t think Paris has any interest in governing cooperatively with the Kanaks, yet alone bringing them into economic prosperity. They don’t see any benefit to the French state from it. Either they want to steamroll and marginalise them once and for all and build their own little fiefdom in the South Pacific like Tahiti, or if that fails they can have their independence and bugger off and try and find their own way (while the Noumea middle class presumably decamps back to the Metropolitan and becomes the modern pied noirs).

Maybe Melenchon would radically change France’s exploitative foreign and colonial policies, but that ship seems to have sailed.

Rwandas developmental model is to invade and loot your large, resources rich but unstable neighbor and export their resources while guilting western governments and NGOs to fund your social services. I suppose that counts as government intervention for development but I don't think it very applicable to a Pacific island with no suh neighbour to invade.