When the unvaccinated tennis star, believing he had an exemption from Australian laws, was detained in Australia the eyes of the world turned to our COVID regime. A year on, plenty has changed.
Supporters of Novak Djokovic dance and sing outside the Park Hotel immigration detention facility in January.Credit:AP
The scene was wild: Serbians in traditional dress blaring songs out of a portable loudspeaker were joined in common cause on the footpaths of Melbourne by anti-vaccination “freedom” protesters. Nearby, refugee advocates also made their point as the eyes of the world trained on the same event: the detention of an international tennis star in an immigration hotel.
“Nole, Nole, Nole,” the Serbian supporters yelled. “Free Novak.”
It was January 7 and inside the Park Hotel, Serbian national hero and tennis star Novak Djokovic sat, stunned at the turn of events as he faced deportation from Australia over his vaccination status.
His legal battle made headlines all over the world and aggravated a debate about mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in Australia. Ultimately, none of the noise made a difference: on January 16, 10 days after he had been detained on arrival at the airport, Djokovic, his ears ringing with a three-year ban, was deported at the order of Australia’s immigration minister.
Refugee advocates joined the throng.Credit:AP
The decision had repercussions beyond dashing Djokovic’s dream of winning his 10th Australian Open title to become the “greatest of all time”. With his vaccination status now publicly known, it became difficult for Djokovic to travel throughout much of 2022.
Blocked from entering the United States, he was unable to compete in another of the sport’s marquee events, the US Open. Djokovic publicly questioned the logic behind the rules, which barred unvaccinated foreigners while allowing unvaccinated residents to play.
On Tuesday night this week, Djokovic slipped into Adelaide without fanfare or objection after Immigration Minister Andrew Giles lifted a three-year ban in November, which had prevented him from entering the country. When Djokovic spoke to reporters on Thursday, he said his deportation 12 months prior had been difficult to digest, but that he did not hold a grudge.
“It’s one of these things that stays with you for the rest of your life,” he said. “It is a valuable life experience … but I have to move on.”
Anti-vaccine protesters joined the Djokovic cause.Credit:Getty
‘More like the flu’
When Djokovic arrived in Australia in early January the country was grappling with the consequences of more than a year of border restrictions and lockdowns as it tried to navigate its reopening.
Density limits for venues, testing requirements and vaccine mandates were part of daily life, lockdowns remained a fear, and the Omicron wave had supplanted Delta, beginning its sweep through workplaces, hospitals and nursing homes and infecting tens of thousands of people daily.
We had become used to extraordinary restrictions in the name of public health.
But Djokovic was no ordinary deportee. He had made the Melbourne Park precinct effectively his own, winning his first major there in 2008 and boasting an extraordinary 64-3 win-loss record since 2011. If he had been allowed to compete in 2022 he was chasing his 10th Australian Open title, and he would have taken some beating.
But despite his sheer dominance in Australia, Djokovic had never been popular, certainly not as measured against rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. And his deportation was a political winner: more than two-thirds of Australians felt at the time Djokovic was “trying to rort the system” at a time when thousands nationwide had missed births, funerals, weddings and other key life events due to border restrictions.
His low-key entrance to Australia this week shows that, as the pandemic marches on, exploding in China and prompting new controversy about our border regime, Australians have mostly moved on.
Recent polling by this masthead shows resentment and distrust linger, with a sizeable 41 per cent of those polled still believing the Serbian player should be banned from entering Australia for the 2023 tournament. But the number of Australians prepared to accept Djokovic playing in the Australian Open had doubled since January, and the percentage of those who don’t care either way had also almost doubled.
Opposition immigration spokeswoman Karen Andrews maintains the rage.
“In my view, there should not be a separate rule for Mr Djokovic just because he’s a high-ranking tennis player, because he’s worth a lot of money. He should be treated exactly the same as anyone else,” she said in October.
But the fact that Djokovic’s return has not prompted widespread debate and outrage shows how much has changed in 12 months, says sociologist and former Race Discrimination commissioner Professor Tim Soutphommasane. Like much of the rest of the world, most Australians were now treating COVID more like the flu than a national emergency.
Djokovic and coach Goran Ivanisevic in Adelaide this week.Credit:Getty
Soutphommasane says Australia’s slow transition to living with COVID meant many still struggled to accept that it was neither feasible nor desirable to mask up and have restrictions indefinitely. Even so, Australians were starting to live again “after nearly three years in a form of suspended animation”.
“It’s strange to think it was the start of this year we had the Djokovic saga,” he adds. “That was just a bizarre episode, which highlighted how Australia at the beginning of 2022 was still very much in a Fortress Australia mindset.”
Serbian tennis journalist Sasa Ozmo, who has followed Djokovic’s career for more than a decade and interviewed him multiple times, describes the furore as surreal and says he is still struggling to fully believe it had taken place.
“I think as time goes by, we will see a lot of things that did not make sense, not just in Australia but in the whole world in the way we’ve dealt with this virus,” he says.
‘Anti-vaccination sentiment’
The Djokovic debate began with a sliding doors moment – his announcement on social media as he boarded a flight to Australia saying he had “exemption permission” to come into the country. That Instagram post put authorities on alert after months of speculation about Djokovic’s vaccination status. The Serbian had refused to reveal his vaccination status. Australian tennis officialdom had resisted a looming vaccine mandate ahead of the tournament, fearing it could deter the vaccine-hesitant champion.
Djokovic believed he was exempt from Australia’s quarantine regime on the basis that he had recently caught the virus. But when he was stopped at Melbourne Airport on January 5, he was interrogated for eight hours by border officials and eventually detained.
Djokovic is stopped by Border Force on the night of January 5.Credit:AP
The tennis pro argued that he had received a medical exemption to play from two blind panels set up by Tennis Australia and the Victorian government, and he had a visa and a letter from the Department of Home Affairs telling him he met the requirements.
But after a frantic night of consultation between airport and departmental officials, they rejected the documents and cancelled Djokovic’s visa, telling the player the particular visa he had applied for and had been granted did not allow exemptions based on a prior infection.
“Rules are rules and there are no special cases,” said then-prime minister Scott Morrison, and most Australians agreed.
In the scenes that followed, Djokovic’s family in Serbia called the incident “the greatest sporting and diplomatic scandal” in history and compared the tennis great’s treatment to Jesus being crucified.
“They are trampling over Serbia and by doing that, they are trampling on the Serbian people,” the player’s father, Srdjan, told reporters.
Jurisdictions and confusion
Unbeknown to Djokovic, he had been caught in a row between the Commonwealth and Victorian governments and Tennis Australia over the confusing rules that had been devised to hold the tournament during a global pandemic.
Federal authorities had written to Tennis Australia at least twice warning a past infection was not grounds for an exemption, but the sporting body and its chief, Craig Tiley, preferred to rely on assurances from the Victorian government that unvaccinated players who had tested positive over the past six months would be exempt from quarantine.
The Victorian government later walked back those assurances, claiming it had never received the federal advice provided to Tennis Australia and would not sponsor Djokovic to remain in Australia.
Australian Open director Tiley told this masthead the environment in the lead-up to the tournament had been hard to navigate.
“Did we as an organisation … do everything we possibly could to follow the rules, and the ever-changing environment, which was a very volatile one at the time? Absolutely we did,” he said.
“When we talk about Novak – would we have preferred that what happened didn’t happen? Absolutely.”
Djokovic succeeded in having the decision overturned at the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, only to have then-immigration minister Alex Hawke use his personal powers to cancel the champion’s visa in the interests of “public health and good order”. After the tennis star admitted to misleading border officials about his travel to Spain and images were published of him out in public in Serbia while infectious, the government felt it was untenable to allow him to stay.
Under his broad powers, Hawke only needed to show Djokovic might pose a risk to Australia. In the words of the order, the minister feared “his presence in Australia may foster anti-vaccination sentiment” in an environment where the “freedom” movement had already orchestrated mass rallies in capital cities and been at the heart of violent clashes with police in Melbourne.
Police move in on anti-vax and anti-lockdown protesters at the Shrine of Remembrance in September 2021.Credit:Jason South
The government’s case relied on comments Djokovic had made in 2020 that he was “personally opposed to vaccination” and would struggle with the idea of vaccine mandates. “My issue here with vaccines is if someone is forcing me to put something in my body,” he told The New York Times.
Ultimately, the breadth of the discretion given to the immigration minister meant it was almost impossible for Djokovic’s legal team to prove the minister had erred in his reasoning. Hawke’s decision was upheld by a full Federal Court bench and the tennis star was deported.
Hawke, former health minister Greg Hunt and former treasurer Josh Frydenberg all declined to comment for this story.
But former Liberal MP and Australian tennis star John Alexander, who broke ranks with the party to speak up for Djokovic during the ordeal, feels the tennis legend paid an enormous price for his beliefs.
“It was very unfortunate. All of this banning people from entering the country, from a sporting point of view, it was terribly bad luck,” he says.
Amid myriad unanswered questions, the biggest one might be this: what sort of reception will Djokovic receive when he arrives in Melbourne?
With James Massola and Lisa Visentin
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