How can I not say something about the saga currently being undergone by tennis champion Novak Djokovic?
This Serbian tennis player arrived a few days ago in Melbourne to take part in one of the four most important tennis tournaments globally, one of the so-called Grand Slams, of which Djokovic has triumphed twenty times (nine of them in Australia), a record he shares with the other greats Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
The original problem is that there is currently the COVID pandemic and he seems to have been caught up in the confusion around rules and regulations on what you can and cannot do in these times.
Australia currently has a rule saying people cannot come to the country unless they are double dosed with a vaccine or have a medical exemption.
From his side, Djokovic has never declared whether he has taken the COVID vaccine, but declared several times he’s against it, his public behaviour was very clear in not following recommendations on social distancing, and so I hope you’ll forgive me for speculating that the jab has not gone anywhere near his shoulder.
I do understand that whether you take the jab or not is a personal decision, but I do not understand why it is so secret. If you are convinced about your decision, why do you not declare it, especially if you’re such a public figure?
But I digress.
The problem is this: the federal government does not accept a COVID infection as an acceptable reason for a medical exemption to vaccination! Therefore, as soon as Djokovic arrived with this contingent, the latter were allowed in as they were all jabbed, and Djokovic was separated, had his visa cancelled and is now in quarantine detention (the detention bit is disputed by the federal government).
Questions immediately arise:
a) why did Tennis Australia and the Victorian state government use criteria for medical exemption from the vaccination, when they knew this was not acceptable for people coming into the country, when the majority of participants in the Australian Open are foreigners?
b) why was a visa issued to him by the Australian Border Force, after it had been requested before he had to board the plane?
To confound the issue, a few days before Djokovic arrived, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison erred by declaring that if the Victorian state government had taken a decision for Djokovic to be allowed in, the federal government would be following the decision that had been taken.
However just a few hours after this statement, the music changed after a furore, with the theme being something like this: “How is is possible that so many thousands of Australians are unable to come back, amongst others due to a lack of vaccine, and this person is allowed in because he’s famous and has a lot of money” and “Why is it that I was unable to visit my mother across the border due to restrictions, and this guy receiving preferences?”
With the federal election approaching, no doubt Morrison is very sensitive to such criticism, and now the case has escalated dramatically, and a crisis has been created with Serbia, and much hubris around the world.
I personally have never liked Djokovic as a person, even while acknowledging his immense talent and ability in the game of tennis, however I have to say it is ridiculous to the extreme for a person to be given the impression that he’d be allowed in and play, get on the plane with his contingent and travel from one side of the globe to the other, and then be detained with the express intention of sending him back. In fact, he’s not on his way back simply because he has opened a court case to nullify the federal government’s decision.
We shall see what happens with his court case, and in some other exemption cases which seem to have been given to other tennis players.
There is no winner in this story.
1https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-06/novak-djokovic-timeline/100740958, retrieved 6/1/2022
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