Former senior Prime Minister staffer revealed as consultant hired by CA to help push Tim Paine out

The consultant Tim Paine accused Cricket Australia of using as its personal pawn to force him to step down as captain can be revealed.

A former newspaper editor has been identified as the man whose crisis management advice preceded Tim Paine’s resignation as Test captain.

News Corp understands Clive Mathieson – a former advisor to NSW Premiers Mike Baird and Gladys Berejiklian is the senior PR Consultant Cricket Australia hired to lead a crunch phone meeting with Paine about how a sexting scandal might shape his future in charge of the Australian team.

In his new book, The Price Paid, Paine claims he left the late-night phone hook-up convinced Cricket Australia wanted him gone and was scathing on the fact chief executive Nick Hockley left it to a PR Consultant he’d never met before to “run the show”.

Mathieson was business editor of The Australian for five years and served another five years as the paper’s editor.

Former editor of The Australian newspaper, Clive Mathieson. Picture: John Feder

CA CEO Nick Hockley. Picture: Mark Evans/Getty

As well as serving as a senior advisor and cabinet director to Baird and Berejiklian, Mathieson also worked as deputy chief of staff and then chief of staff to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Mathieson’s bio says in his role with Turnbull he: “provided high-level advice to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues on policy and political issues.”

Hockley has declined to respond to the allegations made by Paine in the book, but Cricket Australia sources claim that Mathieson didn’t directly advise Paine to retire, instead presenting media scenarios about how the story would play out.

However, Paine writes in his book he felt that CA had “held a gun to my head.”

“… I found it very strange that this person, someone I’d never met and someone who did not work at Cricket Australia, took the lead in the call while Nick, the chief executive, took a back seat,” Paine writes.

“The consultant then said that the best way to get ahead of the story was if I stood down as captain.

“I was stunned by that, so was James (Paine’s manager, James Henderson).

“Who was this guy? What did he know about the circumstances? That was the first time anyone had mentioned me resigning as captain. There was no way I was doing that. I knew what had happened. Cricket Australia knew what had happened and in my mind this guy didn’t know, or worse than that, it was like he believed that I had sexually harassed her.

Former Test captain Tim Paine says Cricket Australia ‘put a gun to my head’. Picture: Jeremy Ng/AFP

“Then Nick chimed in, saying how experienced this guy was and how he thought I should listen to his advice. I said, ‘Do you want me to resign as Test captain, Nick?’

“He couldn’t give me a straight answer, or wouldn’t. He kept talking around in circles.

“And this guy said, ‘If you resign as Test captain it will take the air out of it but if you stay on they are going to keep coming at you.’ I think he said I wouldn’t last until Monday and I replied that I would if they backed me in.

“… It was becoming obvious what Cricket Australia wanted me to do but they didn’t have the courage to say it themselves, they were letting their hired consultant run the show.”