http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/david-penberthy/ Dave grew up in Adelaide’s southern suburbs and attended a really nice public school, Marion High, which was subsequently bulldozed during the tyrannical reign of Liberal Premier Dean Brown. He fell into journalism while not studying law at the University of Adelaide. He joined The Adelaide Advertiser as a cadet journalist in 1992 and spent his first few years on the newspaper as education reporter, industrial reporter and state political reporter. In 1996, shortly after the election of the Howard Government, he was posted to Canberra to head the Advertiser’s parliamentary bureau. In 1999 he moved to Sydney to join The Daily Telegraph as state parliament bureau chief, a position he held for three years before his appointment as chief of staff and then as opinion editor and roving columnist for the paper. In April 2005 he became editor of The Daily Telegraph, a position he held until November last year. He is now the editor-in-chief of news.com.au and The Punch. When not writing about stuff or reading stuff other people have written, he can be found at home in the kitchen cooking traditional dishes from Mexico, where he lived for a year in 1986, and which after a few tequilas he will wrongly cite as his place of birth. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:00:13 +0000 Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:00:13 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/memo-kev-pee-or-get-off-the-pot/ The joke when Peter Costello was trying in vain to cobble together a viable leadership push was that he had enough supporters to fill a Tarago van. Kevin Rudd probably has around the same level of support – Kev’s van might also be fitted with a trailer to carry a few extra bods up the back – but it in numerical terms it is far from being an unstoppable juggernaut which will steamroll Julia Gillard out of the top job. It’s the numbers that matter in politics. In the absence of good numbers, aspiring leaders fall back on psychology. History suggests it offers no sure path to the leadership. Quite the opposite. Peter Costello was a bit like the dorky guy at the school disco who hung around in the corner hoping a girl would ask him to dance. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/memo-kev-pee-or-get-off-the-pot/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/memo-kev-pee-or-get-off-the-pot/#item7697 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:55:00 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/propping-up-car-jobs-wont-save-them-in-the-long-run/ A mate of mine went on a family holiday to China in January. He relayed an interesting item from a local English language newspaper about a new pay deal which had been struck for manufacturing workers in Macau. Under the deal, the workers will be paid AUD $239. Not $239 a day. Not $239 a week. But $239 a month. Factoids such as this are illustrative, and depressingly so, as countries such as Australia grapple with the future of manufacturing jobs. The current discussion about the future of the car industry has been complicated by the high Australian dollar, which is driving up the cost of everything we export. Regardless of whether our dollar was at 70 cents or at parity with the greenback we would still be wrestling with the exact same problems of competition amid the unstoppable forces of globalisation. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/propping-up-car-jobs-wont-save-them-in-the-long-run/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/propping-up-car-jobs-wont-save-them-in-the-long-run/#item7687 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:33:29 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/a-horror-movie-about-poverty-and-violence/ When the Snowtown murder trial concluded in 2003 a prominent criminologist scandalised the good people of Adelaide by saying there was nothing surprising or remarkable about the case. New Yorker Allan Perry, a lecturer in criminal law at the University of Adelaide, blamed what he called a subculture of degeneracy in the city’s most depressed and dysfunctional suburbs, defined by inter-generational welfare dependency, the daily abuse of alcohol and drugs, shocking levels of child abuse, child neglect and family violence. Dr Perry said the only thing which shocked him about Snowtown was that people were shocked by it. And he really cut loose in his description of my hometown, sending talkback and the letters pages into meltdown, and prompting the then Attorney General Mick Atkinson to tell him to move back to Brooklyn. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/a-horror-movie-about-poverty-and-violence/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/a-horror-movie-about-poverty-and-violence/#item7675 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:55:51 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/first-lets-sack-all-the-staffers/ The two biggest stuff-ups of the political year to date have said little about the conduct of our politicians and everything about the judgment of the advisors they employ. Given that 2012 is not yet five weeks old, these two remarkably stupid episodes confirm the extent to which the black art of media management has become an unchecked cancer on modern politics. The irony is that in both cases the very people who were hired to make life easier for our politicians, ostensibly with their capacity for crisis management and flair for finessing a message, have in one case created the crisis and in the other mangled the message. This should not be of interest solely to political tragics and Canberra insiders. The punchline to the joke is that the mugs who are footing the bill are, of course, the taxpayers, who over the past two decades have funded an ever-increasing number of spin doctors, speech writers and media advisors for politicians of every hue at both the state and federal level. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/first-lets-sack-all-the-staffers/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/first-lets-sack-all-the-staffers/#item7639 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:49:59 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Year-starts-with-shoe-off-trouble-ahead-is-a-shoo-in/ Those in the business of applying the defibrillators to Julia Gillard’s prime ministership have been quick to talk up her grace and decency during the tent embassy mayhem, while also pointing an accusatory finger at Tony Abbott for inciting the chaos. Whatever sympathy Gillard may have received after her frightening ordeal will now be undermined by the resignation late Friday of a junior staffer who had stupidly worded up the protesters as to Abbott’s whereabouts. Nevertheless the PM clearly handled herself with courage and compassion. The footage revealing her asking the security service to ensure Abbott would also be safely escorted from the restaurant was a credit to her. She didn’t know she was on camera, and there was nothing confected about her concern. Laudable, too, was her comment later that day that her only regret was the violence had disrupted an event recognising the courage of emergency services crews. At a more human level, Gillard simply looked terrified as she was rushed from the building. Only the most jaundiced critic would have felt for her as she was dragged to safety. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Year-starts-with-shoe-off-trouble-ahead-is-a-shoo-in/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Year-starts-with-shoe-off-trouble-ahead-is-a-shoo-in/#item7631 Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:30:19 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/time-to-fold-up-the-tent/ The Aboriginal Tent Embassy has never engendered any public respect. It has never done anything to bring black and white Australia together. It is sadly fitting then that the 40th anniversary of this illegal assortment of galvo humpies was celebrated with an unprecedented outburst of violence which saw our Prime Minister being dragged along the ground and our Opposition Leader behind a riot shield. The scenes in Canberra represented a new low in the four-decade history of this politically useless eyesore. If it was the intention of its inhabitants to draw attention to the plight of black Australians, they instead invited nothing but scorn. The irrational nature of their conduct was captured in a single quote from Tent Embassy founder Michael Anderson yesterday: “To hell with the government and the courts.” penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/time-to-fold-up-the-tent/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/time-to-fold-up-the-tent/#item7618 Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:07:58 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/charlie-teo-and-the-race-to-shut-down-important-debate/ In one of his inspired monologues some years ago the great Sam Kekovich set his mind to the question of Australian racism. “I’m no racist,” Slammin’ Sam thundered. “In fact some of my best friends should be sent back to where they came from.” Sam’s hilarious analysis was born out last week when the extraordinarily gifted Australian neurosurgeon Dr Charlie Teo made the fairly unremarkable observation that some Australians were prone to displays of prejudice. Teo added the deadly accurate footnote that the peculiar characteristic of Australian racism was that the moment anyone noted its existence, even with the stated qualifier that it only involved a minority, they were howled down. As if to prove his point, Teo was immediately smashed up by readers of websites throughout the land as a knocker, a hand-wringer, a whinger who should probably bugger off back to wherever he came from. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/charlie-teo-and-the-race-to-shut-down-important-debate/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/charlie-teo-and-the-race-to-shut-down-important-debate/#item7592 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:00:00 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Premier-jay-is-walking-while-bikie-criminals-run-amok/ I am not sure who the South Australian Police Commissioner is. Is it still Mal Hyde? Or did we get a new one? You wouldn’t know. Whoever he is, he is, as they say, a quiet man who keeps to himself. In fairness, it’s not as if the South Australian Police Service has been doing nothing. Earlier this year, via its Twitter site, SAPOL courageously announced that it was launching an all-out blitz on one of the gravest threats to civil society - jaywalking. In a joint venture with Channel Nine, cameras were mounted at some of Adelaide’s most lethal intersections, places such as Beehive Corner which are a magnet for these dangerous criminals, with the offenders being nabbed and shamed as they went about their despicable enterprise. We can all sleep safer as a result. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Premier-jay-is-walking-while-bikie-criminals-run-amok/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Premier-jay-is-walking-while-bikie-criminals-run-amok/#item7434 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:40:58 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/killed-with-kindness-onshore-processing-is-a-deadly-policy/ Mark Latham is notoriously harsh and personal in his choice of language. It was one of the things which made him unelectable as prime minister and which saw him shred every friendship he ever had upon making his furious exit from parliamentary life. At the same time Latham can also make sense. His analysis may often be brutal and poorly-timed but it is often also right. He was 100 per cent right when he said on Sunday that the people who advocate the onshore processing of asylum seekers, on compassionate and humanitarian grounds, are creating a situation where desperate people will risk their lives at the hands of people smugglers in the dangerous hope of making it to the Australian mainland. Of course Latham could have easily avoided insinuating that the likes of Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young and the Labor Party’s Left Faction had effectively killed the 200-odd men, women and children whose bodies were still being picked out of the sea off the coast of Java. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/killed-with-kindness-onshore-processing-is-a-deadly-policy/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/killed-with-kindness-onshore-processing-is-a-deadly-policy/#item7414 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:00:23 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Biggest-moments-of-2011-6-NOTW-hacking-Guardian-mistake/ It is impossible as an employee of Rupert Murdoch to offer any thoughts on the phone hacking scandal in the UK without being accused of being a company patsy and probably also a sycophant, even a liar. On a personal and professional level I have found some of the revelations which have come out of the UK to be troubling at the very least, and appalling at their absolute worst. It is also the case however that two of the biggest and most damaging allegations against the company aren’t actually true at all. From where I sit, working for the Australian arm of this media business, the whole affair is starting to look like a psychotic and reckless fight-to-the-death by British journalists who, in that hyper-competitive media culture, have often cut corners or chanced their arms to be first with the news. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Biggest-moments-of-2011-6-NOTW-hacking-Guardian-mistake/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Biggest-moments-of-2011-6-NOTW-hacking-Guardian-mistake/#item7379 Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:05:31 +0000 David Penberthy | Author bios | The Punch