Susie O’Brien: Tennis stars don’t understand what a privilege it is to be on our soil

Victorians don’t need planeloads of foreigners with coronavirus entering our state and bemoaning rules that are there to keep the rest of us safe.

The Australian Open fiasco should never have happened.

The tournament should have been cancelled or deferred until it was safe, like the Tokyo Olympics or the Grand Prix.

Instead the Andrews government, greedy to hold onto another jewel in its major events crown, allowed 1200 players and crew to come here from countries where the coronavirus is out of control.

These include Sloane Stephens from the US, where there have been 24 million cases and 400,000 deaths, Heather Watson from the UK, which has had three million cases and 88,000 deaths, and Angelique Kerber from Germany, which has had two million cases and 46,000 deaths.

Victorians, who have been through so much already, don’t need planeloads of foreigners with the virus entering our state.

And we don’t need players in quarantine bemoaning rules that are there to keep the rest of us safe.

As I write, 72 players are confined to hotel rooms, but this number is expected to rise as testing continues.

=Novak Djokovic is among the international arrivals who have a problem with our rules

Daniel Andrews may insist the players and officials are all “tucked away safely in hotel quarantine”, but there’s already evidence to the contrary. At least one player and a crew member have broken the rules.

I don’t have faith in the goodwill of players to stick to quarantine protocols and I don’t have faith in our system to contain the players and officials locked up against their will.

Players earning millions of dollars a year don’t care about the threat of a $20,000 fine and a warning from police.

The recent scare at the Holiday Inn on Flinders — which saw two staff members return false positive tests — shows how precarious this situation is.

The wish list from Novak Djokovic, who’s quarantining in Adelaide, shows how out of touch many players are.

Djokovic’s list of demands included letting some players leave quarantine early and allowing others to self-isolate in private houses.

Players deserve good food and enough room and equipment to keep their fitness levels up, but that’s about it. However, all people in quarantine deserve these things, not just top tennis stars.

The moaning about the restrictions from a number of players — who will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few days’ work — reveals how entitled and pampered they are.

They don’t see how serious this is for Victorians who went through one of the harshest lockdowns in the world.

They don’t see that two weeks of isolation is a small price to pay for the safety of six million Victorians.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has defended hosting the event.

They don’t see that there’s no way they can be allowed to leave their rooms for five minutes, let alone five hours.

Premier Andrews and Tennis Australia boss Craig Tiley would well know that the coronavirus has been rife among the tennis community, with people from many nationalities mixing freely at tournaments.

Novak Djokovic has had it. Andy Murray’s got it. Madison Keys has got it. Tennys Sandgren has still got it, and he’s been allowed to come.

Top players have consistently flouted international quarantine rules, with Djokovic even organising a controversial tour of Croatia that didn’t adhere to even the most basic health standards.

In October last year Tiley said there was no way players would “be stuck in a hotel for two weeks just before their season, that won’t happen”.

So how can he be so sure that the players won’t break quarantine now?

Andrews and Tiley were so anxious to have this mob here that they looked the other way. They thought they could control a virus that is running rampant in many parts of the world.

The same thing is happening in South Australia, where a top player like Serena Williams was allowed to bring her husband, her daughter and her sister with her. It’s not a family holiday, it’s a tennis tournament during a global pandemic.

Williams and other players isolating in Adelaide are also allowed to practise on courts outside of their hotel for five hours a day.

It’s more than arrogance, it’s lunacy. They’re not only putting themselves at risk, but the South Australians caring for them too.

How could Andrews and Tiley be so naive and negligent as to allow this to happen?

It’s clear they care more about a tennis tournament than the needs of the Victorian community or the 40,000 Australians stranded overseas.

The Premier said the Australian Open has no impact whatsoever on the number of Australians returning from overseas who are coming into hotel quarantine in Victoria.

But if players can get special treatment and chartered flights, why not anyone else?

Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist

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Originally published as Susie O’Brien: Tennis stars don’t understand what a privilege it is to be on our soil