14 Facts About David Combe

David Combe achieved a degree of unwanted prominence through the Combe-Ivanov affair of 1983.

Harvey David Mathew Combe was born in 1943 in Adelaide, South Australia, and was educated at Prince Alfred College and the University of Adelaide where he earned a BA.

David Combe became interested in politics at university and joined the ALP, partly through his friendship with Don Dunstan.

In 1973 David Combe became the youngest-ever National Secretary of the Australian Labor Party after the election of the first Labor government for 23 years.

Coventry, David Combe had been an informer for the US prior to the 1975 election.

In 1983 David Combe was accused of compromising Australia's national security in dealings with a Soviet diplomat, Valery Ivanov.

The commission found that David Combe had indeed been targeted by the Soviets, but there was no proof of intelligence breaches or of any threat to national security.

David Combe was later appointed as Australia's senior trade commissioner in Western Canada from 1985 to 1989, and in Hong Kong from 1990 to 1991.

David Combe was Senior Vice-President International and ran the European operations of Penfolds and Southcorp Wines during the rise in popularity of Australian wines in the 1990s.

David Combe is credited with developing significant export markets for Southcorp Wines, whose exports increased in value from $A 40 million in August 1991 to $A 300 million in June 2000.

In 2000 David Combe was named Australia's Top Export Salesman by Overseas Trading magazine and was included in the list of "Twenty Five Most Influential Australians in Asia" published by Business Asia magazine.

From March 2001 to November 2003 David Combe was a non-executive director for the Western Australian wine producer Evans and Tate Limited.

David Combe said in 1998 that there was 'circumstantially a good case to believe that some trustees were heavied by the Party' into rejecting the work.

In 1998, David Combe donated his portrait to the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, "through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program".