Pitiable profit won’t tighten Burke’s purse for pollie pals

Few companies love a related-party transaction as much as Village Roadshow, but their unrelenting efforts at wasting shareholders' money isn't confined to side deals with family members.

Having managed a pitiable profit of $219,000 (somehow, off $1.1 billion in revenues), chief executive Graham Burke has loosened the purse strings to splash out on his pollie mates.

Village Roadshow has donated more than $160,000 to political parties despite turning a meager profit.Credit: Shakespeare

The Melbourne company gave more than $163,000 to the Coalition and Labor last year - not a bad effort when most corporates are dialling back their political donations.

Burke, the boss since Bud Fox met Gordon Gekko the first time, isn’t afraid of using the company bank account, in 2017 forking out $70,000 to buy bikinis from his daughter Lisa.

Meanwhile, his chairman Robert Kirby made himself $1.4 million richer using Village Roadshow cash to buy wine from his Mornington Peninsula vineyard Yabby Creek for the past four years.

Now, shareholders will be pleased to know that despite not receiving a skerrick in dividends last year, Village Roadshow’s mates at the Liberal Party are $110,000 better off, according to financial returns for the last financial year made public on Friday.

(Labor leader Bill Shorten will have to be happy with just a $51,144 contribution.)

Maybe the donations were in aid of his crusade against internet piracy, a cause for which Burke penned a Timothy Leary-inspired letter claiming the illegally downloading of Hollywood blockbuster would lead to “criminal neighbourhoods that proliferate with prostitution, pornography, drug selling and illegal gambling”.

It's too bad for Burke — caught up fighting off heroin-peddling hookers — that he’s missed the streaming services looming down on Village Roadshow’s cinemas like fully laden semi-trailers.

And no amount of political contributions will help him there.

Back in black

Roosters chairman Nick Politis, pictured with Cooper Cronk, has steered his club into the black.Credit: Gregg Porteous

Meanwhile, there's been another win for the country’s richest car salesman, Nick Politis.

The Sydney Roosters, chaired by the billionaire, posted a profit in a league otherwise awash with red, where the Tigers posted a surplus in December for the first time in their two-decade history.

Easts ended last financial year in the black to the tune of $715,000, according to documents signed off by the NRL club’s heavyweight board on Friday.

That’s compared with  a $436,000 loss last year.

(Another rival, Cronulla, announced a $3 million loss in November.)

The Roosters’ wealth, long a sore spot among competitors, is overseen by Politis, Yellow Brick Road chairman Mark Bouris and Endemol Shine Australia chief executive Mark Fennessy.

This year’s bottom line, however, was amply assisted by a $13.2 million grant from the NRL and the NSW Rugby League — up from $8.3 million last year — and $3.3 million from Easts Leagues.

Too hot to door knock

Spotted: Melbourne Greens MP Adam Bandt in Sydney over the weekend, assisting Jenny Leong's  state election campaign (a trip taken during another difficult period for the party in Victoria after the dramatic resignation of former high-profile Batman candidate Alex Bhathal).

Our sources wondered whether Bandt’s star power has waned, after he was seen at the Newtown Hotel on King Street at a Saturday function with just five attendees and dozens of empty chairs.

Take it to the runway

We know the Coalition is working overtime on its so-called "women problem", so we were buoyed to hear the party's next generation had taken the challenge to heart.

We hear the West Brisbane branch of the Young Liberal Nationals have decided it's time for the return of the Miss Young Liberal pageant.

(What else could improve female representation like a parades, sashes and a catwalk?)

The idea was raised at a branch meeting last Wednesday at Ipswich's Prince Alfred.

We're unsure if the motion was passed.

Either way, both Young Liberal president Liam Staltari and Liberal federal director Andrew Hirst, when contacted, immediately ruled it out.

No surprise there.