Novak Djokovic case puts Australian government in no-win situation ahead of elections

The Djokovic visa saga could have a big impact on this year’s Australian elections as Canberra faces a dilemma with either decision likely to provoke a backlash, writes Stephen Evans

A billboard depicting Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic on a building in Belgrade, Serbia, 10 Jan 2022 (AP)

The decision by Federal Circuit Court judge Anthony Kelly to back Novak Djokovic’s appeal against the cancellation of his visa has left the Australian government in a no-win situation.

Following a dramatic day, which saw Mr Djokovic’s initial victory in court, his Melbourne hotel besieged by fans, a press conference held by his family back in Serbia likening his treatment to “torture”, interventions from Andy Murray and Nigel Farage, questions over when the tennis star contracted Covid last month, and the player himself calmly taking to the court to practice for this month’s Australian Open, the government in Canberra has been left with a monumental headache.

After the judgment, the Australian government was considering revoking Mr Djokovic’s visa a second time, as it has the power to do. It decided to sleep on the matter – but one imagines there won’t be much rest overnight as its lawyers and spin-doctors analyse the consequences of doing so.

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Either Scott Morrison’s government revokes the visa or it allows unvaccinated and defiant Mr Djokovic to parade on the biggest stage anyone could wish for. Either course makes it look incompetent.

And if the immigration minister does now revoke the visa once more, Mr Djokovic will no doubt go back to the courts, of law, not tennis.

As the Liberal MP and former professional tennis player John Alexander put it: “The minister’s ‘personal powers to cancel visas’ are designed to prevent criminals otherwise walking our streets, or to prevent a contagious person otherwise walking our streets; they’re not designed to assist in dealing with a potential political problem of the day.”

And this is true. Visas are usually cancelled when, for example, a member of the criminal underworld in Melbourne or Sydney goes to see family in Europe and hasn’t taken the trouble to nail down his citizenship status.

Apart from anything else, what was portrayed as a mere bureaucratic decision, driven by the advice of health experts, increasingly seems to reek of political intervention.

If they seriously didn’t want him, why on earth did they give him a visa to fly here?

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s former prime minister

As Mr Djokovic put it himself in a document before the court, the officials he dealt with at the airport frequently left the room to consult others. “This all gave me the impression or idea that the decision about my visa was not completely up to the people that were talking to me, and instead it was up to someone else above them,” he wrote.

There will be much finger-pointing now between three parties: Tennis Australia which badly wanted the defending champion to defend his title; the government of the State of Victoria which badly wants not to offend Tennis Australia for fear of the tournament one day moving to Sydney; and the federal government which suddenly faced soaring case numbers and growing anger against anti-vaxxers.

Did Mr Morrison’s government suddenly realise how bad it would look if an avowed vaccine shunner was in the spotlight on Australia’s biggest global sporting event? The prime minister’s detractors call him “Scotty from marketing”, a prime minister concerned more with surface than substance. Might this have played any part in the shenanigans?

Supporters of Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic arrive outside the office of Novak Djokovic’s lawyer in Melbourne, Australia, 10 January 2022 (EPA)

The mystery remains: how was a visa for quarantine-free entry to Australia granted to an unvaccinated person when the advice given to Tennis Australia and the Victorian government was that a Covid infection in December (which Mr Djokovic had) was not grounds for a failure to vaccinate?

Australia’s Labour Party scents blood as anger about the pandemic rises. “Total incompetence!”, former Labour prime minister Kevin Rudd tweeted. “Like on everything else. If they seriously didn’t want him, why on earth did they give him a visa to fly here? This was conceived as one giant distraction strategy when out in the real world people can’t get tested.”

There is a federal election this year which must be held on or before 21 May.

If Labour can’t run rings around Mr Morrison, it looks like the unvaxxed Serbian tennis player can.