David Combe

David Combe was a political figure in Australian Labor Politics as well as a long term Australian Wine Executive. David was ALP Secretary from 1973-1981 in which he helped transform the Australian Labor party into a strong political party which helped Bob Hawke win the 1983 Election.

As an Australian wine industry executive who is credited with developing significant UK/European export business for Penfolds/Southcorp Wines from 1991 through to 2000. In 2001, he left Southcorp Wines to join the ill-fated Western Australian wine producer Evans and Tate Limited as a non-executive director with a view to providing strategic input and guidance in an ambitious acquisition programme. . Being an Outspoken critic of the UK Wine industry being run by large scale Supermarkets, In 2004, in a speech at Bordeaux, he lambasted the wine-purchasing policies of UK supermarkets which "if committed in Australia, would represent major breaches of the trade practices laws". As winery profits plummeted, he moved to Simon Gilbert Wines but resigned in February 2007. The company failed, was delisted and renamed in November 2007 as Prince Hills Wines Limited with David Combe as its chairman.

Born and educated in Adelaide, he became interested in politics at university and joined the ALP partly through his friendship with Don Dunstan. After serving as its unusually youthful secretary from 1973 to 1981, he formed a Canberra consultancy, providing business and political advice and lobbying. In the early 1980s Combe was central to the major political scandal known as the 'Combe-Ivanov affair'. From 1985 to 1991 he was a senior trade commissioner in Canada and then in Hong Kong. Senior Vice President of Southcorp Wines from 1991 to 2000, he is credited with establishing that company's enormous export operations. Between 2001 and 2007 he held corporate positions with Evans and Tate Ltd and Simon Gilbert Wines Ltd; he has been Patron of the Don Dunstan Foundation since 2004. The so-called 'Combe-Ivanov affair' developed out of a trip Combe and his wife made to the USSR in 1982, in the course of preparations for which they met and developed a relationship with the First Secretary for the USSR, Valeriy Ivanov. Soon after the formation of the Hawke government ASIO raised concerns that Combe, closely aligned to the ALP, may be being 'cultivated' by a Soviet citizen with KGB links. Ivanov was expelled from Australia in 1983. The highly publicised events were investigated by the Hope Royal Commission into Australia's security and intelligence agencies of 1983-1984, which found that Combe had indeed been targeted by the Soviets. Though he was cleared of suspicion of spying, Combe, said Bob Hawke, had been compromised, and 'understood and accepted' that government ministers could no longer deal with him as a lobbyist.

David had been the Australian Consular General in Vancouver from 1985-1989 from which he helped introduce many Australian export products to Canada. After the Vancouver posting he was then assigned the role of senior trade commissioner in Hong Kong prior to being headhunted by Penfolds Wines to head their European Export operations.

Before that, he conducted his own consultancy, David Combe and Associates Pty Ltd, in Canberra from 1981 to 1985. He was national secretary of the Australian Labor Party from 1973 to 1981.