That changed this week when the Liberal Party donor and treasurer, and major shareholder of the Helloworld travel group, was in the headlines over the latest scandal engulfing the federal coalition. First it emerged that Helloworld paid for Finance Minister Mathias Cormann's flights for a family holiday to Singapore, worth $2780, in 2017. That was within weeks of two Helloworld subsidiaries being awarded contracts to provide airline and hotel bookings for the Australian government worth about $1 billion in bookings over three years. Cormann later revealed he had personally asked Burnes to book three family trips to Singapore. He paid the money back immediately after being contacted by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. The maelstrom then widened with allegations tabled in the Senate from former Helloworld executive Russell Carstensen that Burnes told him he was able to arrange a meeting with Hockey, now Australia's ambassador to the US, to discuss a department travel arrangements on very short notice because Hockey "owes" him.

Burnes said in a statement he did not arrange the meeting between Carstensen and Hockey, and had not discussed the meeting with Hockey. Hockey and Burnes forged a tight friendship since meeting in the early 2000s, when Hockey was the Howard governments' tourism minister and Burnes held senior positions at Tourism Australia and the Australian Tourism Export Council. Burnes later became godfather to one of Hockey's three children, and even hosted Hockey's karaoke-heavy 50th birthday bash at his property near Echuca, on the Murray River in country Victoria. In a statement late on Friday Hockey said the meeting at the centre of the allegations was "a general discussion about current arrangements for the delivery of travel services in the Unites States and Australia. There were no commercial opportunities with the Embassy offered or available." "It is deeply regrettable that the circumstances around the meeting between the Embassy and QBT have been misrepresented."

"Mr Burnes and his wife Cinzia are close personal friends of my family and have been for nearly twenty years. Our friendship is not a secret given that we undertook treks for both the Kokoda Trail and Mt Kilimanjaro with TV cameras present." When the company Burnes founded, The Australian Outback Travel Company (AOT), merged with Helloworld in January 2016, he was paid $25 million in cash, awarded $80.9 million worth of Helloworld shares and appointed managing director and CEO. Together Burnes and his wife Cinzia now own 35 per cent of the company, with their stake worth $213 million, even after the 20 per cent fall in its share price this week following a softer than expected half-year result on Monday. This week was not the first time Burnes' business and political lives have collided with explosive results. The Age revealed in 2016 that Burnes was sitting on a prime piece of real estate on Normanby Road, South Melbourne, which he bought in March 2012 for just over $7 million.

Four months months later, the then-Liberal state government's planning minister Matthew Guy controversially rezoned the land from industrial to "capital city" as part of its Fishermans Bend renewal project. That was a windfall for Burnes, boosting the value of his property to an estimated $20 million, and opening the door to his applying to build a 41-story $115 million office, retail and apartment tower on the site. Despite the heat he is attracting, there is sympathy from inside parts of the Liberal party for Burnes. "It's hard to get business people to put their head up above the parapet and work in politics," said one Sydney-based Liberal insider. "It doesn't help when someone like Burnes is the subject of a 'he said, she said' attack from a former employee.

"It will be hard for the party to find people to do these jobs when this happens." Following the party to commemorate losing the nation's top job to Malcolm Turnbull, Abbott offered to pay the $1000-plus replacement cost for a new coffee table. The clean-up bill for this latest mess has yet to arrive.