18 January 2022
Novak Djokovic has been deported from Australia and will not be competing in the Australian (Tennis) Open in Melbourne. For most of you, that is not a revelation.
Djokovic appears (to me at least) a somewhat polarising figure; one loves him or dislikes him. It would be fair to say that, even before this year’s events, most Australians fell into the latter category. However, those in Australia who follow tennis, or sport, and/or love our big events, recognise that Djokovic is an outstanding tennis player whose participation in the Australian Open enhances its prestige. For that reason, at least prior to this year’s Australian Open, Australians – but mainly Melbourne people – welcomed him (if through gritted teeth).
However, this year – 2022 – was different. Few in Melbourne – other than perhaps the Serbian-Australian community and certain tennis diehards/purists – wanted him to come to Melbourne to compete. The consensus was that he should have withdrawn, and not made the trip. Certainly, many of us were startled, first, that Djokovic was granted a visa and, secondly, that he would be permitted to compete. This notwithstanding he was not vaccinated against COVID (a requirement for all overseas visitors to Australia), as he had secured a ‘medical exemption’.
One would expect, therefore, that Melbourne residents would be pleased at the news of his deportation. I think this is the right result, but it has an ‘end justifies the means’ feel about it, and (for me) left a very unpleasant taste in the mouth.
For those outside of Australia, context is vital. The city of Melbourne has for most of 2020 and 2021 endured a range of relatively severe restrictions on our daily lives in response to the COVID pandemic. In earning the title as the ‘most locked down city in the world’, Melburnians have endured, not just lockdowns, but curfews, mandatory mask-wearing rules, prohibitions on visiting loved ones in our own city, vaccination rules and QR check-in requirements. This vibrant and wonderful city has been a very grim place. Nevertheless, with varying degrees of good grace (and despite a very small minority, whipped up by political interests), Melburnians have willingly complied, absorbed the sacrifices that the restrictions entailed and, at least until recently, enjoyed minimal case numbers and deaths (at least by world standards). This was a collective achievement, of which the city can be proud.
Because Australia’s media is drawn to emotion and drama, like a moth to a flame, it has fallen over itself in its analysis of the behaviour of the local players: the Federal government and its immigration system, and Tennis Australia (the body that organises and runs the Australian Open). The former controls who is allowed to come into the country (although, initially, it pretended that its hands were tied, and that the real reason Djokovic was allowed in was the Victorian state government and Tennis Australia) and administers an immigration and visa system of dazzling complexity. The latter, no doubt wanting to safeguard the global prestige of the Australian Open, ran its own process for determining which players would be permitted to participate in the Open, which included an option to grant ‘medical exemptions’ for those players who were not fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Significantly the Federal government informed Tennis Australia some months ago that one of the bases for Tennis Australia’s medical exemption (namely, that a player would be exempted if he or she had contracted COVID in the last 6 months) was contrary to the mandated requirements for all overseas players. This meant that a player holding an exemption granted by Tennis Australia risked being denied entry into Australia by immigration authorities. Tennis Australia, however, kept this information to itself, allowing Djokovic and a few others to think that the medical exemptions granted to them were sufficient.
What followed is now well-known. Djokovic arrived at Melbourne airport, could not produce evidence of his vaccination against COVID-19, and was told that his medical exemption was not worth the paper it was written on. His visa (I will get to that in a minute) to enter Australia was cancelled, then reinstated by a court on a procedural ground (he was denied an opportunity to seek legal advice and was given insufficient time to consider his position), and then cancelled again by the Federal government. His second court challenge failed.
The outcome is unsatisfactory, to me, for a range of reasons. First, Djokovic has been made to look like a victim or, worse, a martyr, to a heartless government and bureaucracy. He is neither. Had Djokovic been fitted with even a half-decent moral compass, it might have occurred to him that turning up in Melbourne, unvaccinated and relying on an ‘exemption’ which enabled him to play anyway, would, at best, be grossly insensitive. Instead, his sense of entitlement, and his expectation of special treatment, communicates to the people of Melbourne that what they have been through does not matter, that they were fools for putting up with the restrictions, because apparently rich foreign tennis players are somehow above the good folk of Melbourne. It should also be remembered that he competed in the 2021 Australian Open, for which he had to be in quarantine for two weeks, something he complained about (and thus largely wore out his welcome). He can hardly claim that he did not know about the depth of feeling in Melbourne towards overseas tennis players seeking special treatment.
Secondly, and notwithstanding my previous point, Australia, and my city Melbourne, have been made to look decidedly second-rate by the actions of both Tennis Australia and the Federal Government, and in so doing, it is hard to argue that Djokovic has been treated ‘fairly’.
Tennis Australia misled Djokovic by assuring him that, armed with a medical exemption, he would sail through immigration and customs at the airport. Had he known that there was real doubt about his medical exemption, and thus his entry into Australia, Djokovic would, at least, have deferred his trip. However, Tennis Australia should also be held accountable to the people of Melbourne. Most major events proceed only based on a range of exemptions and latitude, not to mention injections of funds, from local authorities, some of which cause disruption to the daily lives of the city. Therefore, in my view, such events proceed with a kind of ‘social licence’ from the city; the citizens see the benefit of the event and are happy for the event organisers to enjoy a range of benefits that would not otherwise be available to the community. Tennis Australia has breached that social licence: in its almost slavish desire to ensure that the world’s leading male tennis player arrived in Melbourne and competed its main event, it has adopted an ‘at all costs’ process to ensure that he arrived, and to hell with the consequences, particularly for fellow competitors, ball boys and girls and officials that would necessarily have to share space with him.
Then there is Australia’s Federal government, and its immigration system. Much has been made about the spurious grounds on which the Immigration Minister exercised his discretion to cancel Djokovic’s visa for a second time. To me, this is sideshow. The more telling question – bearing in mind that the government trumpeted the fact that ‘rules are rules’ – is how it is that a visa was granted to a person who was not vaccinated (and, as far as anyone was aware, was not going to be vaccinated) at the time he arrived in Australia. It has been reported that the application process for the visa sought by Djokovic is automated, and that there is little ‘human’ checking or verification. If indeed ‘the rules are the rules’ (as our Prime Minister boasted), and the rules are that non-citizens cannot enter the country unless duly vaccinated, then it beggars belief that such non-citizens can obtain a visa largely on what appears to be an honour system. While it is true that, when Djokovic arrived, he had to prove that he had met the entry requirements and was refused entry, initially, because he could not do so, he nevertheless was able (through the incompetence of our border officials) to be allowed into the country lawfully. It should never have been allowed to reach that point.
Djokovic’s brief stay in immigration detention also highlighted the plight of a different group of non-citizens seeking to enter Australia: our refugees. These people have not enjoyed the benefit of a ‘tick-the-box’ automated process. Instead, they face a visa application process which places obstacles – many largely insurmountable – in their way, and which results in them being effectively imprisoned while the byzantine immigration process continues for them. The reasons for this process are political, just as the grant to Djokovic, and then subsequent cancellation, of a visa was political. Putting the appalling treatment of those refugees, it is another example of how there is one system for the rich and powerful, and another for the rest.
That, notwithstanding his power and wealth, Djokovic found himself on the wrong side of the law this time, gives me no real satisfaction. He should not have come, and he should not have been allowed to come.
