With Russia playing a deadly cat-and-mouse game with Ukraine, this week the world number one tennis player, Novak Djokovic, must have thought we needed a distraction.
Following his charm offensive with the BBC’s Amol Rajan earlier this week, Djokovic has announced that he would like to play the Australian Open again, despite the minor complication of his having been banned from entering Australia for three years, following his deportation last month.
Djokovic told Serbia’s national TV, ‘I want to come back to Australia in the future and to play on Rod Laver Arena again… A lot of professional and personal beautiful things happened to me there. Despite all this, I have a great connection with Australia.’
Djokovic indeed has a great connection with Australia – after all, Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena is his Grand Slam happiest hunting ground.
Djokovic deserves respect for declaring he’ll put his principles ahead of his career. He is also, however, being realistic
But as he told Rajan, he remains unvaccinated and has no intention of changing that. If, he says, keeping faith to his principles is at the cost of foregone tournaments, trophies, and sponsorships, so be it.
Djokovic deserves respect for declaring he’ll put his principles ahead of his career. He is also, however, being realistic. As far as his Grand Slam ambitions go, Australia, the US and France currently prevent Covid-unvaccinated people from entering their countries. Unless this changes in the foreseeable future, Djokovic’s quest to be the greatest Grand Slammer of all time will depend on his winning Wimbledon regularly for the rest of this decade.
So, understandably, he’s spinning that reality as best he can.
In his PR blitz, Djokovic has spoken of the detrimental effects of his non-vaccination stance (he’s pro-choice rather than an anti-vaxxer, he says). He has also expressed belated regret for some of his past actions, including being interviewed by French journalists in December while knowingly infected with Covid.
Here in Australia, however, it was very much noticed that Djokovic did not regret the trail of destruction he wrought in his ill-considered determination to push Australia’s immigration rules to the limit, when lesser mortals, including Australians in prolonged pandemic exile, could not enter the country without being double-vaccinated. The collateral damage caused to Australia and the Australian Open, and to the reputations of those who tried to facilitate his entry even though he was not fully frank with them about whether he was, in fact, vaccinated, seemingly means little to him.
There are Australians who admire and romanticise Djokovic’s stand. Spectator Australia’s James Macpherson has even likened it to the missionary Scottish runner Eric Liddell’s refusal to run a Sunday race in the 1924 Paris Olympics, despite being gold medal favourite.
The reality, however, is that most Australians approved Djokovic being given the boot. They do not see him as a folk-hero but a chancer who ‘tried it on’ with the authorities to get into Australia without complying with the country’s rigorous vaccination requirements. They also see him as someone whose actions have given dangerous comfort to anti-vaxxers everywhere, even though he insists he isn’t one himself.
Djokovic’s detention and deportation caused a major political backlash against Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, so severe it contributed to his government’s collapse in the polls just three months from a general election. The Australian public’s anger at the government was not, however, because Djokovic was kicked out, but because he was given an entry visa in the first place without having to prove his vaccination status.
Certainly, Djokovic’s border battle highlighted major failings in Australia’s border controls, including harsh immigration rules geared to the discredited Covid-zero policy that kept the country isolated from the world for nearly two years. But going by the reaction here since his BBC interview, and especially the reaction to his stated intention of returning Down Under, the Australian public largely is unimpressed by Djokovic’s declarations of principle and self-sacrifice. It may give Djokovic private satisfaction to know how he was treated may help bring down the government that deported him but, to most Australians, his promoting himself as a martyr for his beliefs doesn’t excuse his conduct.
Australians are as pandemic-fatigued as anyone, especially as we have also been plagued by state governments whose control-obsessed leaders discovered their inner authoritarians in this pandemic. We yearn a return to normality, and all but a vocal minority accept the price of normality includes full Covid vaccination. If we are expected to comply with vaccination requirements, we expect our visitors to do likewise. It is not an unreasonable request, and it is not persecution to ask a visitor to prove his vaccination status, or to deny him entry if he’s unjabbed.
If Novak Djokovic cannot accept this, Australia cannot accept him. An online commenter on his Serbian TV interview said it best: ‘Get vaccinated you mug! You will be safer, and so will everyone around you!’
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