Sports Minister Greg Hunt said Sunday the federal government was prepared to provide mediation between Cricket Australia and players over the pay-dispute stalemate. CA chairman David Peever has turned down the Australian Cricketers' Association's request for independent mediation and there are fears the stand-off could potentially lead to a players' boycott of the showpiece Ashes series later in the year.
Hunt said the government was hesitant about being too interventionist in contract disputes in professional sport. But he said there was scope to act as a mediator if the dispute looked likely to threaten the home Ashes series. "If it got to a last-minute situation, I suspect that we would offer to provide good officers brokering between the parties, but there's six months between now and the Ashes," Hunt told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "It would be unthinkable that in the end we wouldn't have a full team. "I do not see either the players or the administration returning to the late 1970s where we had a second-rate team.