THE stoush between the Federal Government and the AFL over drug testing intensified yesterday with AFL boss Andrew Demetriou saying he would not be surprised if players withdrew their support for out-of-competition testing if the Government's proposals were adopted.

Demetriou said the Government was foolhardy to think it could stop drug use with a zero tolerance policy.

"Their view is simply that because footballers are role models they should be treated differently from other people in society and that they should be punished from the first strike," he said.

"It's not the view of the best experts who have spent two years researching the policy, who believe that the current policy that we've got is the best opportunity to change behaviour and minimise the use of illicit drugs.

"Our players … like no other sports people in this country and probably like no other members of the community have volunteered for this policy.

"They've given up (their right to privacy) and when you volunteer for a code that gives you an opportunity to be rehabilitated and have your behaviour change one wonders whether they will volunteer if on the first strike they'll be punished and denied their livelihood."

He said the penalty should not be the same as for players who tested positive on match day.

"If a player tests positive to drugs on match day they'll be named and they'll be shamed and they'll be publicly humiliated and they'll have to go to the tribunal and in 98 per cent of the cases they'll get two years, because it has the ability to effect the integrity of the competition."

But the Prime Minister's key adviser on illicit drugs Christopher Pyne said the AFL had to clean up its act: "(They think) because they have a drugs policy out of competition, somehow that means they should be praised and lauded and that should be regarded as zero tolerance, but the Government doesn't have that view."

He said children looked up to footballers more than other sportspeople and that was why the Government was targeting the AFL first.

He denied the Government was making an election-year push on the issue to score political points. "The only reason this came up was because of the issues to do with drugs in the AFL," he said.

The Government has attracted criticism from its own over its attack. Former Victorian Liberal Premier and now Hawthorn President Jeff Kennett said it was "a bit rich".

"The AFL and its constituent clubs and members are a workplace and this workplace has imposed on itself a policy that is not matched by any other workplace in Australia. No one else," he said.

With MICHAEL GLEESON