I have been working on my first couple perl module packages with the Debian Perl Group, and a change of debhelper to version 6 in [pkg]/debian/compat and building on Etch (version 5) gave me a few problems.. A bit of help from Roberto got me pointed in the right direction – this works:

$ cd [pkg]
$ svn-buildpackage --svn-dont-clean --svn-builder="pdebuild --use-pdebuild-internal"

Kind Regards.