Buckle up, folks because this latest drop of #NovakNews is a doozy and there’s a LOT going on involving Tennis Australia, Immigration and commemorative stamps…somehow.
In what has become an incredibly embarrassing Australian saga (involving our govt being absolute dicks re: our borders until a rich white guy wants to come in, and then U-Turning our decisions on the world stage), Novak Djokovic’s lawyers have claimed that he was told he could enter Aus because he’d had COVID the month before.
Now, if true, this is seriously cooked stuff. In a series of Federal Circuit Documents released on Saturday eve, Djokovic’s lawyers claimed that the Department of Home Affairs said he was all good to enter the country on January 1st.
If you’ve somehow missed it, Djokovic was allowed to enter Australia despite his vaccination status being under question. He was then detained and almost deported on Thursday after Aussie officials claimed the evidence he supplied for his vaccine exemption and his visa application weren’t enough to grant him entry.
Then, his lawyers appealed the decision in the Federal Circuit Court. Hearings for the case started on Thursday and have now been postponed til Monday.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the letter said that Novak Djokovic’s response to the Aussie Travel Declaration indicated that he met all the quarantine-free travel requirements.
Other documents also said that his visa had been granted on November 18 and he’d received a medical exemption certificate from Tennis Australia’s chief medical office.
Love finding out that people can have the rules about vaccines waived if they’re rich and play a sport, but thousands of people haven’t seen their international families and friends for almost two years! That seems like a great system!
Now, what’s particularly spicy is another bit of SMH reporting about an official Australian Open document.
According to the doc, players in the AO were required to have their vaccine exemption documents ready for review by an independent panel before the 10th of December last year.
In the medical exemption from Tennis Australia – which Djokovic received on December 30 – it was noted that he’d tested positive for COVID on December 16, which is why he’d been granted an exemption.
However, as pointed out by the Sydney Morning Herald, if players had to present all their vaccine documents by December 10, Djokovic would’ve been ruled as unable to play because he hadn’t been diagnosed with COVID-19 yet.
It’s also come to light that shortly after Djokovic’s positive result, he was out and about doing things such as receiving his own Serbian commemorative postage stamp and attended a kids tennis award ceremony. You know, the important stuff…
An honor to receive my very own Serbian stamp. Thank you to my generous country for this rare gift! I’m humbled!! Excited to share we’ll partner with the Serbian National Postal Service on @novakfoundation projects for every child to have the opportunity to attend preschool 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/Ww8Zma95NU
— Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) December 17, 2021
Are you following? I feel like I need a map to properly illustrate the different court documents.
As Miley Cyrus famously sang: What does it mean? What does it mean? WoaahhOOah.
Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that the Greg Hunt, the federal health minister, contacted Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley back in November to say that players wouldn’t be granted vaccine exemptions if they’d recently had COVID as per Fox Sports.
“The Australian Border Force has advised that people must be fully vaccinated, as defined by the ATAGI, to gain quarantine-free entry into Australia,” he said, according to the ABC.
“I can confirm that people who contracted COVID-19 within the past six months and seek to enter Australia from overseas, and have not received two doses of a Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)-approved or TGA-recognised vaccine (or one dose of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine), are not considered fully vaccinated”.
Obviously, that doesn’t seem to have happened.
Then Victoria’s acting Premier Jacinta Allan said on Friday that Tennis Australia hadn’t told them about any of this Greg Hunt chat.
“I’m advised that members of the Victorian government hadn’t seen that correspondence,” she said.
“It’s the Commonwealth government that is responsible for issuing visas and how they engage in that dialogue with bodies like Tennis Australia is a matter for them.”
Novak Djokovic is currently being held in an immigration hotel in Melbourne.
