Usman Khawaja open to future in politics after meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

In the same week that Australian captain Pat Cummins had an audience with Anthony Albanese pushing for funding for community sport due to the impacts of climate change, a cancelled meeting between Khawaja and the Prime Minister over the war in Gaza was revived on Thursday.

On a bizarre day at Parliament House, Khawaja initially revealed at a 9am press conference that the PM had cancelled their one-on-one meeting, but an hour later it was suddenly back on, with Treasurer Jim Chalmers appearing to be the catalyst for rescuing the cricketer’s private chat with Albanese.

Khawaja also joined Independent Senator David Pocock in lobbying the Government about gambling advertising and sport, with Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg on Thursday morning asked his thoughts given CA has a commercial arrangement with Bet 365.

Greenberg defended cricket’s relationship with gambling advertising as low-key compared with other sports, but also defended Khawaja and for that matter, any Australian cricket player’s right to voice their political opinions.

“I’m on record … a number of times saying that we want our players to be the true version of themselves, have their own voice and I think you’re seeing that unfold over the last few days,” Greenberg said, with the CA chief himself in Canberra on Wednesday meeting with politicians over cricket matters.

“I think that’s a good thing. We can’t ask players not to be the true version of themselves and be robots and stick to media scripts. So they have to be who they are. That doesn’t mean that everyone has to agree with those positions and I know they’ll attract some criticism, but that’s OK.

“The world’s not made for everybody to agree.”

Khawaja made it clear his meeting with the Prime Minister, which Treasure Chalmers also sat in on, was purely about Gaza and him expressing a belief that the Government needed to go further in imposing trade sanctions on Israel, reiterating his support for the Palestinian people had nothing to do with politics or religion, but was purely “humanitarian.”

Treasurer Chalmers praised Khawaja as a “wonderful humanitarian and a very fine Australian.”

Speaking on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Khawaja remained tight-lipped about his interaction with the Prime Minister, praising Mr Albanese for his courage but saying more courage was required to impose sanctions on Israel.

“I would never dream of going in there to tell the Prime Minister how to do his job,” Khawaja said.

“No promises (were given by the Prime Minister). I wasn’t expecting promises. I feel like I got a good hearing. I got a meeting with the Prime Minister. I respect the Prime Minister.

“I voted Labor … I still think he’s the best man for the job. He showed courage (by recognising Palestinian State).”

Khawaja was also asked about whether he had any interest in following retired Wallaby, Senator Pocock, into a career in politics.

It’s understood Khawaja has built up a rapport with Pocock by interacting privately with him over social media for some time and came down to Canberra at the Independent Senator’s invitation.

“I’ll concentrate on cricket for the time being, see what life throws at me after it. Never say never,” Khawaja told the ABC Afternoon Briefing.

“I want to finish my career. I want to give back time to my family first and foremost, I want to stay involved with the game of cricket a little bit at the start and what comes after that I’m open to.”

Khawaja earlier in the week expressed his dismay at the damaging impacts of exposing young people to gambling through sports betting advertising as Senator Pocock pressured the Government to adopt all 31 recommendations from the two-year old report You Win Some, You Lose More.

Cricket Australia takes much less from its gambling partner than the football codes and deliberately does not have a betting partner for the Big Bash due to its target audience being kids.

“We talk to him (Khawaja) and a lot of our players about different things that we do. Wagering is one of them. It’s a hot topic with the Federal Government with all the recommendations. We’re keeping a close interest in that,” Greenberg said.

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“I think you can see cricket’s been quite conservative in that part of our work and will continue to be.

“We’ve made some strong decisions on our position on wagering particularly around the BBL … I think out of many of the sports we are quite conservative in our approach to wagering, but again we’re keeping an opening interest.

“… But Uzzie’s well within his own rights to have his own views and again I encourage him to do that.”