Novak Djokovic saga: PM, when you are in a hole of your own making, stop digging

Illustration: Johannes Leak

As we waited, and waited, to hear if the Immigration Minister would use his personal powers to kick out Novak Djokovic, news leaked that the tennis player may have “lied” on his incoming travel paperwork. Seems there might be a date discrepancy about when Djokovic last travelled.

This is the sign of a desperate, delaying government likely poring over polling and hunting for ex post facto reasons to discredit Djokovic.

When in a hole of your own making, stop digging. Climb out with grace. There is a way Morrison could turn around a trashy drama that is an insult to the tennis player, and our country’s reputation as a free and fair-minded country.

He could lead by pointing out that it’s high time our Covid border policies are changed. Until he does that, he will share inglorious similarities with Mark McGowan. Both have border policies that are disproportionate, embarrassing and idiotic. Both policies point to politicians unable to manage risk sensibly.

What makes Morrison’s position worse is that as Prime Minister he has used his federal pedestal to tell Australians to push through, to live with Covid, to lift the doona. He has preached that people want government out of their lives.

By using the world’s top tennis player as a political football to play moralising border cop in the lead-up to a federal election, Morrison has made a farce of those sentiments, and exposed his attachment to a Fortress Australia policy well beyond its use-by date.

Serbia's Novak Djokovic watches as coach Goran Ivanisevic films news helicopters flying above as they take part in a training session in Melbourne on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Those who are excited to see the Djokovic debacle as a proxy battle for different border policies that deal with asylum-seekers need a triple dose of clear thinking. Djokovic was invited into this country to play at a grand slam tennis tournament. The winner of 20 grand slams, hoping for his 21st at the Australian Open starting next week, filled out every form he was required to, provided documents asked of him, including a vaccination exemption provided by Tennis Australia’s panel of medical experts and a letter from the Department of Home Affairs confirming his visa to enter the country.

Djokovic had recently recovered from a Covid-19 infection. Medical experts acting for Tennis Australia and the Victorian government understood the rules to mean that Djokovic therefore did not need to be vaccinated for six months.

As Federal Circuit Court judge Anthony Kelly said on Monday during Djokovic’s legal challenge to the Morrison government’s deportation order: “What more could this man have done?”

Throughout Monday’s live-streamed legal proceedings from Melbourne, Kelly was scathing of Djokovic’s treatment by the federal government and the Australian Border Force delegate.

And for good reason. Did Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews read the transcript of the border bureaucrat’s interview with Djokovic? Did any of her advisers? What about anyone in the PM’s office? Had anyone with an ounce of sense read this 30-page transcript they would have seen a dodgy interview leading to a dodgy decision where the tennis player was not treated fairly or reasonably.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a press conference in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Detained in an airport room for hours from midnight on January 5, without legal counsel or access to his phone, Djokovic was unable to contact TA officials to help with questions that, very politely, he did his best to answer. At 5.22am the ABF bureaucrat promised Djokovic extra time so he could rest and contact TA by 8.30 that morning. The bureaucrat then reneged, waking the tennis player around 6am and effectively telling him that speaking with TA or lawyers wasn’t going to make a difference to the decision to cancel his visa.

This, said the judge, “has the quality of this ex post facto view”. No matter what Djokovic provided, border bureaucrats had made up their mind to cancel his visa. No one in the Morrison government looked at this debacle with a modicum of common sense before defending the decision. Instead, the PM and his ministers applied the excitable and distorted lens of politics.

The humiliation was avoidable. Morrison could have taken a breath and let the Victorian government cop the flak for granting a medical exemption to Djokovic.

Instead, the PM sniffed a wind somewhere and decided to have a fight with Tennis Australia, the Victorian government and the world’s top tennis player.

“Rules are rules, especially when it comes to our borders,” the PM said, right after border cops cancelled Djokovic’s visa. His sermon about obeying rules backfired when Andrews was forced to agree in court on Monday that the bureaucrat acted unreasonably towards the tennis player.

Morrison’s obsession with pub politics has exposed him as a populist drunk, more focused on low-rent politics than sensible policy that is becoming of a leader.

The question now is whether any good can come of the Morrison government’s public humiliation in court on Monday?

It ought to be the trigger for a new and freer border policy that reflects three realities. First, Australia’s high vaccination rates. Second, Omicron is infecting hundreds of thousands of Australians without a blowout in mortality rates. An unvaccinated tennis player who had contracted Covid and carried Covid antibodies was no danger to a country awash with Omicron. Third, we must, as Morrison says, live with this virus and demand less intervention from government in our lives.

If not now, when do we live with Covid? If not now, when do we get governments out of our lives? Or are these just marketing blurbs from a PM who is more middle management than leader, a man who reached the top job because his predecessor made such a hash of it? Morrison is Malcolm Turnbull’s legacy.

If the Prime Minister tries to turn this into his Tampa moment by digging in to defend border policies that barely made sense in 2021, then it will settle his place in the pantheon of Australian politics as the poor man’s version of John Howard.

Howard took on people-smugglers and won. Morrison chose a fight with Tennis Australia and Victoria’s Labor government, used a tennis player to play tough border cop, and was humiliated in court. He will dig a bigger hole for himself if he refuses to change the country’s Covid border policy to reflect reality.

Look at it another way. While snooty elites in the international community condemned Howard’s border policies before, during and after Tampa, many countries – especially in Europe – have been trying to emulate those policies in recent years. No one will want to copy how Morrison damaged the country’s reputation with its shabby treatment of Djokovic.