http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/helen-parker/ Helen Parker is a Senior Video Journalist for news.com.au. Prior to joining News Limited three years ago, Helen worked as a documentary producer, a television series producer for the 9 and 7 networks and news chief of staff for NBN3. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +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/Lest-the-young-forget/ It seemed like a cool trick. Placing my thumb neatly into the scarred hole on the side of my dad’s waist. My thumb sitting flush to his body. To a five-year-old it seemed like the injury was fashioned that way for a reason. In fact it was senseless. A war injury that barely told the truth of the “indefinable personality change” noted on my father’s war records, which I’ve only days ago uncovered. As a teenager in the 1980s there was a succession of years when public debate rang around whether we should even bother having Anzac Day. The expression “glorifies war” was bandied about to an offensive level. For the first time I felt like a stranger in my own country. My opinion about the value and significance of Anzac Day was in the minority among my peers. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Lest-the-young-forget/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Lest-the-young-forget/#item8329 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:45:25 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ill-never-forget-the-day-i-got-sent-to-davy-jones/ He was always so healthy. Always looked after himself. I can’t believe Davy Jones, member of sixties pop sensation The Monkees, is dead of a heart attack at just 66. I first met Davy Jones in the south of England in 1990. I was in England writing stories for a racing magazine owned by Kerry Packer and I was down near Brighton to interview the keeper of the queen’s horses, Lord Porchester. Lord Porchester wasn’t available that day. But I had put in another call to Davy Jones, who lived nearby. He called me and said “come down to my house”. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ill-never-forget-the-day-i-got-sent-to-davy-jones/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ill-never-forget-the-day-i-got-sent-to-davy-jones/#item7901 Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:55:31 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/O-what-a-tv-flop/ Nearly a decade ago, Channel Seven programmers were keen to give a stunning Gold Coast girl air-time. Jacqueline Last, nowadays better known as Jackie O, soon proved the point that being photogenic doesn’t mean you’ll be good on TV. Screen presence, that certain je ne sais quoi, is an indefinable quality that draws the viewer in and makes you keep watching. The weird science of video lens calibration that captures you in a sequence rather than a single shot is a unique beast. Audiences can smell a dud a mile off. No matter how stunning or controversial someone might be, if they don’t have screen presence the viewer will revolt. As they did in droves, when the initial audience of 1.2 million watching Jackie O and Kyle What’s-his-name’s first TV show diminished to just 200,000 near the end of the show. That, after a 1.4 million lead in. Apparently Channel Seven have short memories. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/O-what-a-tv-flop/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/O-what-a-tv-flop/#item7278 Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:00:49 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Killing-the-closure-myth/ I grew up on the edge of a World Heritage region. It’s a twisted irony that these rainforests proved an ideal place for criminals to hide their activities. Where better to dump a dead body than in a remote wilderness? This horrible truth was discovered by two little girls, who 40 years ago found the decomposed remains of a child in the bush. Vicki Barton was an eight-year-old local, snatched from the steps of a Blue Mountains shop in 1970. Like murdered Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, there was a massive hunt to find the kidnapped girl. Grim-faced police spoke to us at school, well before the phrase ‘stranger-danger’ existed. Vicki’s body remained hidden for 18 months until the two girls, about Vicki’s age, made their gruesome discovery. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Killing-the-closure-myth/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Killing-the-closure-myth/#item6739 Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:55:37 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-road-safety-campaign-that-finally-cuts-through/ It is an extraordinary moment. A stadium of 4,000 hormone-charged teenagers from all walks of life, sitting in absolute silence, engrossed by the scene playing out before them. No one has asked them to be quiet. It just happens when you’re watching strangers die in front of you. VIDEO: Crash course We are at the 2011 Youth and Road Trauma forum, an event which is the brainchild of the extraordinary team at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital Trauma unit. Exhausted from years of dealing with pulverised youthful bodies due to motor vehicle crashes, the team’s director Dr Ken Harrison decided it’s time for a new tack. Usually, 16 and 17 year-olds converge at the Acer Arena for rock concerts. This is different. The scene unfolding on the large arena floor is a re-creation of a fatal road crash involving teenagers. The ‘drivers’ and ‘passengers’ are young actors, but everyone else is an emergency professional playing their roles in such a matter-of-fact manner, it’s deeply disturbing to watch. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-road-safety-campaign-that-finally-cuts-through/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-road-safety-campaign-that-finally-cuts-through/#item6142 Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:40:51 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dont-blame-the-cattlemen-for-indonesias-cruelty/ I’m in a chopper flying low over the cattle yards of one of the biggest live exporters in the country. This cattle station is almost the size of a small European country. We’ve spent the day constructing new cattle yards about an hour’s dusty drive from the homestead - in one of the ‘near paddocks’. It’s a long way from somewhere in the Top End, Northern Territory. The cattle here are tough. Brahman cross shorthorn. Their sweet faces and floppy ears belie their true grit; surviving on red-brown grass in 45 degree heat and semi-wild conditions. These are the same breed of cattle shown in the vision aired on Four Corners on Monday night. Intelligent beasts being flayed and tortured - sickening images. Now we’ve all been whipped into a frenzy over it. We want to lash out. Like an animal running blindly with emotion we are bound to trip over. Banning the live meat exports to Indonesia makes as much sense as Chicago’s Prohibition laws: good intentions but disastrous results. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dont-blame-the-cattlemen-for-indonesias-cruelty/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dont-blame-the-cattlemen-for-indonesias-cruelty/#item5992 Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:55:52 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Airheads-with-gadgets-have-hijacked-real-storytelling/ We were due to start shooting at 8:00am. Legendary actor Bill Hunter, Billy to his mates, looked at me with one eye open, the other squinting and with a wry smile made it clear he wouldn’t be moving until I relaxed, sat with him and had a beer or two. He hadn’t said a word. His was a face that told a story. Four other well known Aussie actors were there too. We were shooting a self-funded pilot for a TV series (that was rejected by the networks). For once I didn’t babble. I watched and listened and learned. I can’t say I knew Bill Hunter, but I was pleased to my core as we sat back and opened a second beer before shooting, that I shared a few golden moments with a man who knew how to tell a story. Bill Hunter had a knack of picking the right Aussie films to be in. He knew what a good story was. So many Australian feature films are a flop nowadays because we lack the ability to tell a good story on-screen. For all the modern gadgets, the hand-held video cameras, the hard-drives; the instant play-back generation simply doesn’t know how to tell a story on-screen anymore. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Airheads-with-gadgets-have-hijacked-real-storytelling/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Airheads-with-gadgets-have-hijacked-real-storytelling/#item5915 Tue, 24 May 2011 20:00:16 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/inside-adfa-a-frat-house-with-guns/ In 2006 I spent a couple of days at the Australian Defence Force Academy. I inspected its organised dormitories (where male and female cadets shared the same buildings - but separate rooms). It’s like an upmarket youth hostel with communal kitchen and bathrooms at the end of each hallway. While there, I fired weapons, ate in the mess and spoke to staff including officers, professors and historians.  It’s an impressive place.  ADFA at first glance looks like a tidy university, but walk into the bookshop and titles like Knife Fighting Techniques by inmates at Folsom Prison remind you this is a different world. This is a frat house with guns. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/inside-adfa-a-frat-house-with-guns/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/inside-adfa-a-frat-house-with-guns/#item5623 Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:55:44 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-once-mighty-medium-of-television-is-on-its-last-legs/ Here’s a simple statistic that TV executives are happy you didn’t know. Back in the 1980s the population of Australia was about 14 million. A good TV show would rate about 5 million viewers. Fast forward to 2011. Australia’s population has grown to 20 million and TV execs are dancing on their mini-bars if their show attracts over 1.2 million viewers. The population has doubled, the viewers have halved. The maths is not good. “Masterchef” peaked last year with over 3.5 million viewers. Proportionally, based on 1980’s viewing habits, Masterchef should have rated nine million viewers. The velocity of the decline is increasing. For an industry that was once a sizable chunk of the life and breath of Australian culture, the Australian free TV industry is “circling the drain”. That’s cop show talk for dying. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-once-mighty-medium-of-television-is-on-its-last-legs/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-once-mighty-medium-of-television-is-on-its-last-legs/#item5369 Sun, 13 Mar 2011 19:55:49 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/exposed-the-fake-world-of-real-television-news/ This is what happens when a group of media are sent to cover an event but miss the “money shot”. We’re going to take you behind the scenes. Our unedited video captures the moment some media crews faked an event not once but twice. VIDEO: ‘Oops’ missed it See what happens when the media pack miss their money shot. // For the launch of author Dan Brown’s new thriller The Lost Symbol, various media assembled to shoot a group of speed readers. The idea was the fastest reader could give the book’s first-ever review. The trouble was, after two and a half hours of waiting for the keen readers to plough through 500 pages most of the media had their eyes off the ball. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Helen Parker) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/exposed-the-fake-world-of-real-television-news/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/exposed-the-fake-world-of-real-television-news/#item1229 Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:59:59 +0000 Helen Parker | Author bios | The Punch