Taking a break in Queensland can make you dissatisfied with home. It’s the weather mainly – warm, sunny, reliable. And Queenslanders drive at the speed limit with the result that, paradoxically,  you get there faster and with your nerves intact.

And then there are the papers. Or one paper at least. We arrived at our Brisbane hotel on Friday evening and woke the next morning to find the Weekend Australian outside our door.

There is really only one word to describe the Weekend Australian and its weekday siblings – quality. We have no quality newspapers in New Zealand. Our metropolitans are broadsheet in format, but tabloid in content. The experience of reading them is rarely enjoyable, often not even informative.

Lack of regular comparison can make you forget this. Your taste buds become deadened. When I’d finished reading the Weekend Australian from cover to cover, constantly dragging Judy away from her book, to say, “Look at this! Listen to this!” I suddenly realised that I rarely read  anything in the Herald. I scan the headlines, then do the cryptic crossword. It’s a feature of tabloid journalism that the headline tells the whole story. The headline is the story. BISHOP IN GAY ROMP WITH BOUNCER!!! What more do you need to know?

But I savoured The Australian.

The last time I felt like this about a newspaper was when I was an undergraduate at Queens. I had an English girlfriend who was frightfully U and subscribed to the airmail edition of The Observer. To reduce weight  and postage it was printed on rice-paper. Your enjoyment began before you had turned the first delicate page. The newspaper felt beautiful. 

The Australian feels and looks good too. But I know too little about newspaper layout and design to attempt an analysis of why that should be. As a publication it is simply easy on the eye. Contributing to that is the extensive use of high quality, often large colour photographs on virtually every page. Some look almost three dimensional.

The news reporting is intelligent, informed, dispassionate, well written. There is  an absence of sensation, partisan reporting, self-congratulation, headline punning or any other symptom of tabloid journalism. Cleverness is left, as it properly should be, to the cartoonist and satirist. The word that appears most frequently in New Zealand newspapers (and on New Zealand television news) is conspicuous by its absence in The Australian. New Zealanders may find this a little bewildering: ABSENCE OF “SHOCK” LEAVES KIWI READERS SHOCKED

Political analysis is in-depth, discursive, neutral.

The paper’s columnists can write and have something of consequence to say, the sine qua non of opinion pieces one might have thought, but sadly not the case in New Zealand, where hyperbole, rancour and bile are the hallmarks of most.

The “Arts” pages are a joy. Reviewers for The Australian understand that their job is first and foremost to write about the work not about themselves. And they write with flair, insight and enthusiasm. So too the paper’s feature writers and interviewers. All prefer to illuminate rather than annihilate. I could find no Michele Hewitsons in The Australian.

I could go on. But really all I’m trying to say is that after reading The Australian  I feel as one feels after an excellent meal – rewarded, satisfied, replete. I never feel that after reading any New Zealand newspaper. The any is important. The Herald is unfairly singled out in my broadcasting and writing because I live in Auckland. It may nonetheless be our best newspaper.

I began by saying that we have no quality newspapers in New Zealand. The truth of the matter is that we have very little quality journalism. The standard of reporting in both the print and broadcast media in this country is simply appalling, from the tabloid horrors of the three Sunday newspapers to the polytech-level reporting and endemic illiteracy of television news. Were it not for the huge number of categories in our journalism awards, it’s doubtful whether anything at all could merit nomination, let alone winning a prize.

But one can’t afford to be precious. Next year I’m thinking of entering in the Best Blog Written By A Geriatric Protestant Atheist Immigrant From Northern Ireland Category. I expect the competition to be stiff.