For months Djokovic had been keeping his vaccination status private and everyone was wondering what he would do. We now know from transcripts released with the immigration officers that he is not vaccinated. He had been planning to claim a medical exemption based on the fact that he tested PCR positive for SARS-CoV-2 on December 16th, but Australia does not recognize previous infection as equivalent to vaccination.
He was escorted to a government-run quarantine facility as he appealed this decision in Australia's courts. Yesterday (Monday) the court overruled the Australian federal government's decision to revoke Djokovic's visa and now it seems that he will play in the tournament.
More info:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/05/novak-djokovic...
Actually, he has been given a document that's supposedly the medical exception issued by Tennis Australia and independent medical panels from the state of Victoria. In the interview transcript, he says that he would not have travelled had he not gotten the exception (and that's supported by the fact that his COVID infection happened past the advertised deadline for exception submission of Dec 10th: IOW, he was likely planning not to go until a "lucky" circumstance presented itself). His visa was issued on those grounds.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/10/i-am-not-vacci...
There were other people and players who've entered Australia on the same grounds, and his "mistake" was to publicly proclaim he's travelling with an exception which caused a public outrage for preferential treatment and led to politicians getting involved.
Realistically, the entire mess up is on Australian institutions on granting that exception in the first place and then reacting to satisfy the public outcry: while it may have been against the law, it was not Novak who's broken it, and the way he was treated was mostly for the public consumption.
While people were concerned he was going to get preferential treatment, he only got preferential mistreatment instead :)
> Yesterday (Monday) the court overruled the Australian federal government's decision
Actually, the presiding judge "convinced" the government's representatives that it's best if they withdraw the cancellation on the grounds of procedural error: the case was not really ruled on, but instead, the agreement has been reached with government paying Djokovic's legal fees. Still, the judge was obviously in favour of Djokovic having done everything in his power to gain entry, and if there were problems, they were not with his actions (legal, at the very least: moral actions are not on him to decide on).
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/10/novak...
Finally, the matter of him appearing in public after testing positive in Serbia is something to look into locally, though I am not convinced it will happen. While he's definitely not just anti-vaccine, but also anti-medicine (he reportedly cried when he couldn't "cure" his elbow for two years and had to undergo a surgery), he does not strike me as that much of a tool, so I suspect it was organisers begging him to appear despite him being infected. Still, as a responsible adult, he should have said no and should be held accountable. I still doubt that will happen: Serbian judicial system is easily influenced by politicians even though it's supposed to be independent.
https://www.cbssports.com/tennis/news/australian-open-2022-n...