I've just returned from a few days in Australia - a winter getaway to the Sunshine Coast - and was reminded once again just how close we are as countries. In all kinds of ways, but not least physically in this age of jet travel (carbon emissions notwithstanding).
In little more than four hours you can be transported from the dull drizzle of a Dunedin winter to white sands and the wincingly bright glare of Queensland's beaches.
In any event, but for a day or so, the Sunshine Coast lived up to its name.
Batteries were suitably recharged. Good food was eaten. Books were entertained. And newspapers were read.
As much as we hear that the golden age of the newspaper is behind us, a visit to an Australian newsagent on a weekend day would soon seem to put the lie to that one: The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Courier-Mail - all fat to the point of bursting and falling off the shelves.
They are not so very different from our own newspapers.
But one feature, which leapt out of The Australian was an entire regular section of six broadsheet pages headed Media and Marketing.
It contained a variety of news reports on television, radio, newspapers, advertising, ratings, and a page of titbits, commentary and criticism.
With one or two notable exceptions, this is not something we do in this country.
Given just how much our view of the world we inhabit is "mediated" by the media, it is a puzzling omission.
And it seems that even where there are genuine attempts to "watch the watchers" such efforts are derided.
Witness Listener columnist and commercial radio host Bill Ralston's recent article on Radio New Zealand National (Listener July 12-18) "Radio ga-ga" - which, were it a little less self-indulgent and a little more intelligent, might have qualified as a contribution to media criticism - in which he bags "somewhat dubiously-qualified media critics whingeing about every news outlet except, of course, RNZ National".
Mr Ralston is probably referring to the half-hour Sunday morning programme Media Watch, or possibly to the 10-15 minute slot on Tuesdays at 11.45 on Kathryn Ryan's Nine-to-Noon.
In a country where media interests are dominated by off-shore companies - Fairfax Media and APN in particular, which own most of the newspapers, the Otago Daily Times honourably excepted - at least some degree of scrutiny of the companies through whose news and comment filters we learn about the world we live in, should be applauded.
Mr Ralston's column landed just prior to the National Party's new broadcasting policy.
And the former TVNZ head of News and Current Affairs could subsequently be heard on Radio New Zealand National, no less, opining that plans to abolish the Charter - which seeks to promote the production and screening of New Zealand programmes that would not be made under purely commercial considerations - would probably make very little difference to the State broadcaster, or to the production and screening of local content.
There are those who beg to differ, just as there are others who agree "the market" is the best arbiter of broadcasting content.
There are implications, for instance, that can be taken from National's policy - if indeed a one-page document on such a complex and important area merits that description - particularly as it concerns Radio New Zealand, and which might worry the pants off public service radio fans: namely the possibility that RNZ could ultimately be subject to the same sort of ratings criteria that govern commercial radio and against which the programmes' future funding could be assessed.
To stretch a point, in such a brave new broadcasting world, probably the first programmes to get the chop would be those who deign to shine a light on the workings of our large and profitable media businesses.
In a similar vein, if one were inclined to be pessimistic, National's arts policy - released last week - seems bereft of any sort of vision beyond the pragmatic promise to maintain funding at current levels, and to review various aspects of the culture bureaucracy.
Arts spokesman Chris Finlayson is a known supporter of the arts with a personal track record of contribution.
He seems held in high regard by many in the sector.
In the event of National's forming the next government, whether Mr Finlayson's personal enthusiasms will be able to withstand those for whom any degree of public funding for culture, the arts and parts of the media are anathema, we will just have to wait and see.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor of the Otago Daily Times.
He is also a playwright. His play The Truth Game has a media setting and like almost all new New Zealand plays has indirectly received development support through theatre "readings".
