We get this. But there are contracts and there are contracts. Genia, McCabe, AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper), Ioane, JOC (James O'Connor), KB (Kurtley Beale), Barnes, Tapuai are all on contracts paying the magic $13K per game plus an agreed fixed payment, in some cases very significant (ie. six figures), and Cooper is expected to play alongside these other players for $13K a game plus nothing. If you can't see that the ARU is offering this contract to humiliate him and get him out of the game then I would classify this as willful blindness.
Put yourself in his shoes. Yes he, Quade Cooper, is rejecting the contract. But, he is a senior Wallaby player who has now been offered a revised contract that could, if he is injured again, earn him nothing at all. There is no workers comp for sports employees. The only workers comp they get is the up-front contract payment. If he puts in the work but injures his knee again in Super Rugby before the Lions tour starts he gets paid diddley squat.
My advice to Quade is to reject the contract, play for the Reds till the end of the season and then go play in France. He would be a sensation in Top 14 and he can earn what he's worth. Australian Rugby will be the poorer. Once again Nucifora, who runs the High Performance Unit where this sort of stuff is handled, has contrived to totally stuff up Australian Rugby. You do not handle a player who has had a hissy fit by behaving petulantly back. If the ARU believed Cooper needed to be cleared out of the Wallabies they should have told him they were withdrawing from all negotiations. That would have been the honourable thing to do. But no, they had to contrive a contract that is so humiliating that he is forced to leave.
The only thing that amazes me is that the ARU think that the Australian public will swallow this "Quade has resigned, we really wanted him" nonsense.