SYDNEY — THE PARK HOTEL in Melbourne is not the kind of place where a gluten-free, vegan tennis star typically holes up. But Novak Djokovic, the world’s best player and perhaps its most famous anti-vaxxer, is not typical. For the past five days he has enjoyed the hospitality of the Park, which is better known for housing asylum-seekers, often for indefinite periods, after Australia’s government cancelled his visa at the border. On January 10th a federal judge overturned that decision, releasing Mr Djokovic from detention and ordering that the government pay his legal fees.
Mr Djokovic, who arrived in the country to compete in the Australian Open, which starts on January 17th, would have had no such problems had he been fully jabbed like 95% of other professional tennis players. Some 78% of Australians have had two shots, among the world’s highest rates. Sympathy for Mr Djokovic has been inversely proportional to the country’s enthusiasm for vaccines.
Still, his case was spectacularly bungled by the federal government. Since the pandemic started Australia’s state and federal governments have made different rules, and blamed each other for the ensuing confusion. Mr Djokovic was caught up in one such hash-up. The state government of Victoria, in which the tennis tournament is held, approved Mr Djokovic’s medical “exemption” from being vaccinated, thus allowing him to enter Australia, on the grounds that he had recently recovered from covid-19, and therefore did not pose a risk to public health.
The country’s conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, at first endorsed this decision. Then, after a public outcry, he changed his mind. When Mr Djokovic landed in Melbourne on January 5th he was detained by border officials. After holding him for hours, they ruled that prior infection did not excuse him from being unvaccinated, and sent him to the Park Hotel to await deportation.
The Serb’s lawyers made two arguments against that decision. First, they said, he was denied “procedural fairness”. Mr Djokovic’s visa was revoked in the early hours of the morning, before he could consult with lawyers or Tennis Australia, the organisation which convenes the tournament. Second, they said, he was the victim of “a variety of jurisdictional errors”. A federal judge, Anthony Kelly, agreed. Two independent medical panels signed off on Mr Djokovic’s arrival. “The point I’m somewhat agitated about is: what more could this man have done?” the judge asked.
How did Australia tie itself up in such knots? “One explanation for the stuff-up is political,” says Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of Australia’s Department of Immigration. Australians are proudly egalitarian. Their mantra is that everyone should get a “fair go”. Yet during the pandemic, governments have bent the rules for the rich and famous. After they slammed shut state and international borders, swarms of celebrities arrived from Hollywood, isolating in mansions instead of quarantine hotels. That infuriated locals who were separated from their families for months or years on end.
When Mr Djokovic announced that he had been granted permission to fly to Australia, many were incandescent. Why should an anti-vaxxing superstar get special treatment, they demanded? It was “a kick in the guts” to Melbourne, one of the world’s most locked-down cities, complained David Southwick, a Victorian politician. The Serb was “laughing in the face of Victorians”, said Sam Groth, a tennis pundit. “Rules are rules,” Mr Morrison then declared, “and there are no special cases.”
Sounding tough about the border is usually a vote-winner in Australia. In 2001 a struggling conservative government turned away a Norwegian ship, the MV Tampa, which had rescued hundreds of refugees from a broken fishing boat bound for Australia. That provoked international condemnation but proved popular at home. “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come,” proclaimed John Howard, then the prime minister. His government was re-elected shortly after.
Mr Morrison, a former immigration minister responsible for sending asylum-seekers to offshore detention centres, takes the same hard line on “illegal arrivals”. He has plenty of reason to play it up. A federal election is due by May and his government is trailing in the polls. Having kept the pandemic at bay with a harsh zero-covid policy for nearly two years, Australia recently changed its strategy and is now aiming to live with the virus. Transmissions have soared and testing sites are overwhelmed.
Whether Mr Djokovic will play in the Australian Open is not yet certain. The federal government has warned that its immigration minister, Alex Hawke, might still use his “personal power of cancellation”. That would allow him to quash Mr Djokovic’s visa and try once more to deport him. If he succeeds, the 34-year-old would be banned from returning to Australia to defend his title for three years. Sports-mad Australians might well see that as a double-fault.
By The Economist
