Djokovic to be deported from Australia after court upholds visa cancellation | Hacker News Reader

Djokovic to be deported from Australia after court upholds visa cancellation

theguardian.com

46 pointssofixa42 comments

It's pretty impressive that the courts in Australia can, in appropriate circumstances, hear and determine a judicial review application, before three judges, over a weekend.

It gives me great confidence in the rule of law, in that federal Executive power can be kept in check without undue delay.

Even better that the rules, in this case, apply equally to everyone

If only other detainees have the same option and visibility!

Unfortunately legal representation is bought by six figure fees. Lawyers are simply mercenaries for hire by whomever will pay sufficiently well to get them out of bed on a Sunday morning to argue a case.

Unfortunately public defenders and pro-bono human rights advocates are not as motivated.

> Unfortunately public defenders and pro-bono human rights advocates are not as motivated.

I think this kind of sweeping generalization is unfair. I've seen many who were very motivated. The fact that legal proceedings take long does not have much to do with the availability of the lawyers. If a case proceeds quickly, it's almost always because of political pressure.

I've seen on TV an immigrant from Iran who's been jailed in the same hotel as Djokovic for several years. Letting him go is probably lenient for Australian standards.

i'm guessing the long-term detainees there are seeking (political?) asylum, and while australia is reluctant to grant them one, they also recognize that deporting them could cause harm to those individuals which would ultimately reflect poorly on australia's human rights track record.

so they end up in this limbo as a compromise.

If I'm not mistaken, the individual who has spend many years (was it 9 years?) in detention is classified as a genuine refugee, however, he came to Australia by boat and the Australian policy is that boat refugees will never settle in Australia. As I understand it, he has applied for a refugee visa to the US and while his application is being processed, he's in limbo.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/07/everyone-asks-...

thank you for providing the details of this specific case.

that's such a bizarre policy. descendants of people who arrived by boat and settled in australia hundreds of years ago deciding that such behavior is unacceptable.

do you happen to know what the rationale for this policy is?

This comment deserves to be calligraphied in gold leaf and displayed in a museum as the ne plus ultra of sarcasm.

Like our FISA? Mind you this Aus court didn't address to what extend the limits can apply. Read their laws. Basically, their FM can cancel for ANY reasons valid or not is not questionable. Court only uphold what is the law never address the limits of it. They have less people than ours, theirs can operate fairly quickly plus this is high profile case.

Unfortunately the media are focused on the vax / anti-vax aspect of the situation.

The core of the matter is that Djokovic and/or his agents provided contradictory and false information in the visa application. It is for that reason alone that the visa could not be granted. The many other issues raised were simply smoke-screen to divert attention to a popular divisive issue.

The Minister's decision to remove Djokovic was essentially because his entry may give rise to anti-vaccination sentiment in the community which might undermine health or good order in Australia. Or, at minimum, this is the aspect of the decision which was challenged in court.

As I understand it, in the reasons the Minister provided Djokovic, the Minister said, in effect, that any lie on the application did not affect his reasoning process. If that's right, it would follow that the media is right to not focus on it.

One simply does simply not lie to Australian Immigration. If you have visited other countries inside the time period you simply check yes - and explain - lest you want to suffer the consequences.

The fact that he knowingly went out in the community the day after receiving his positive test result doing media events leading up to this is probably besides the point, however it did little to gather sympathy in the general Australian population.

For his ability to read the room, so as to speak, he scores a solid zero. Djokovic, the only ace player to be booted from a major tournament after missing only two shots. Good riddance.

I think the media are entirely within their right to point out these issues. Djokovic showed up to an interview the day after getting a positive PCR test in December. He's taken part in at least one other spreader event previously.

As for "provided contradictory or false information", just go with "lied". Let's call a spade a spade.

> Unfortunately the media are focused on the vax / anti-vax aspect of the situation.

They cannot just assassinate the character of someone else, just for being anti-vax, so they find someone who is anti-vax AND broke the rules. Then they can focus on the anti-vax aspect as much as they want, because he broke the rules.

Another player was playing with symptomatic covid while most of the media was focussed on Djokovic. Apparently this does not pose a threat, because the other player was vaccinated. Was this other player spreading inactivated covid because of the vaccine?

https://www.eurosport.com/tennis/australian-open/2022/bernar...

Two things can be true at the same time:

1. There shouldn't be an exception to the rule for a high-profile person

2. The rules are draconian

They can be. But they're not.

There is nothing draconian about a rule requiring vaccination for a disease responsible for a global pandemic with the 5th highest death toll in human history. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#By_death_tol...

It is draconian if you cannot show that the vaccines are working against transmission. You need to vaccinate about 80-120 people to prevent one more covid case and that is based on old data[0], pre-Delta and pre-Omicron. Now the efficacy is worse. It is draconian if you cannot show that the rules are not arbitrary. There was another player at the court who was playing while having covid symptoms[1], but this one was fine, because he was playing by the rules.

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...

[1] https://www.eurosport.com/tennis/australian-open/2022/bernar...

Transmission isn't the only thing to optimise for - hospitalisations, which were and remain the main limit to how much Covid we can handle, are significantly lowered by vaccination. That's a giant win whatever way you look at it.

> optimise for - hospitalisations, which were and remain the main limit to how much Covid we can handle, are significantly lowered by vaccination.

There are other things that lower that risk significantly, such as having recovered from covid previously, having no co-morbidities, healthy diet, being young, having a sufficient vitamin D level and many more. Why does everyone need to get the same medical treatment? Not all people are the same. The risk to get myocarditis from the mRNA vaccine is higher than getting it from covid for males under 40. This is a large share of a population.

> The risk to get myocarditis from the mRNA vaccine is higher than getting it from covid for males under 40

Citation required. That's been debunked IIRC. And even if it were true, myocarditis isn't the only thing a male under 40 can get as a negative effect from Covid.

> Citation required.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29697780

I am not aware of any debunking yet.

> myocarditis isn't the only thing a male under 40 can get as a negative effect from Covid.

This is true, and the vaccine has some potential to mitigate that, but there are other factors that need to be considered too, such as trying to keep laws undraconian.

It is when that rule completely ignores natural immunity. It is illogical and unscientific. I will never understand why natural immunity continues to be ignored in these discussions.

There have been multiple new variants.

Immunity from one does not help with others.

People have been getting covid multiple times. (eg. Glenn Beck).

The vaccines were also developed for a previous variant and work so so with Omicon.

Djokovic should have joined the end of the queue in waiting for his case to be heard.

How completely fucked up that mega millionaires get their court case heard immediately over the weekend.

> In a statement, Hawke welcomed the unanimous decision, arguing that Australia’s “strong border protection policies” had both “kept us safe during the pandemic” and “are fundamental to safeguarding Australia’s social cohesion”.

This is the best part of the article, where they ignore that they got the worst of both world's through their radical incompetence, in not vacinating as many people as possible as soon as possible. They have China's level of respect for the principle of freedom of movement with a European ability to actually keep the virus under control. Absolute pissing away of a huge advantage.

Australia has to have one of the least competent public health apparatuses in the Western world, and that's really saying something.

Djokovic denied is expected. What I didn't expect is Aus government is this messy with only 20mils (and maybe a fraction of that since this is Melbourne). If they didn't have mining boom and cash strap, I shudder to think how their government can function properly.

In my opinion, this is the right outcome but with a lot of unnecessary drama. He shouldn’t have been issued the visa in the first place, and the organisers and the govt should’ve made it clear that past illness isn’t considered grounds for exception.

Now the anti-vaxxers will be out in force and who knows what else.

I agree on the drama part adding the hypocrisy factor on top. Someone who has shown clear disrespect of other people by knowing that he is positive and going around in general and also without measures and tries on top to appear as the victim of others , is a clear indication that he will stop nowhere and especially for the current situation it should have been straightforward be banned from entry AND the relevant organization - ATP in this case - should have taken a clear stand, money aside as much as possible, since their product will still be there in 4-5 years when this guy will not be there any longer

I'm vaccinated myself, but why should past illness not be grounds for exception? Natural immunity works about as well as a vaccine, and fades much more slowly over time. Obviously it would be even better if he had both, but he poses no more risk than a vaccinated person.

(This of course avoids the question of whether he really had the illness, but for the sake of the argument let's assume he did.)

I didn't say it should or shouldn't be grounds for exception - that is the current stance of the govt which applies to all other travelers.

Not only that, their visa cancellation has nothing to do with for the benefits of the people. It is when media highlights his non vax status, Aus government quickly backtrack (elections coming) and specifically cancel the visa. Basically instead of behaving like a proper beauracrats, they temporary turn into CCP China. Imagine if it is not Djokovic, and media never highlighted it, and unfected with Spanish+Mersa flu. Man...Aus people should have a better government. SG is right above there can give a lot of good pointers.

So Djokovic is clearly in the crazy/paranoid pile for just not getting vaccinated - however to me the real assholes in this story are the Australian politicians for treating someone like this just to score reelection points. How is this not in the spotlight?

I mean he gets invited in, gets the visa issued - then they wait until he actually arrives to revoke his visa and lock him up - and this for information/documents they already had. The judge sees it this way too and he gets the decision overturned.

Then the politics gets involved again and revoke it again for obscure (basically not defendable in court) "public safety concerns", organise an expedited hearing over the weekend (so he cannot get a continuance and still play) to throw him out again.

Why is he crazy/paranoid?

He has a lot of motives to be careful, especially with the current agenda to push a still testing phase vaccine at all costs

Would you ask a devout Christian if Jesus is real? Maybe, if you were taking the piss. Don't bother with these extremists unless you're taking the piss. This is way past the point of discussion. These people either see you as part of them or against them.

They have the mentality of going with the herd and supporting that no matter if it's good or bad.

Visa issued on false information. This is found out so it's cancelled. Not sure how this makes the cancellers assholes.

Mmmm no - his visa was canceled by Immigration Minister Alex Hawke exercising his rights "in the interest of public safety" (citing section 133C (3) of the Migration Act) and saying it might create riots and promote antivaxed agenda if they let him in. There were no official claims that it was ever issued on false information - just the newspapers speculating.

OK, I worded that badly but Australia has border rules that everyone is supposed to comply with, with no specific exemptions for being a famous tennis player. The false information was saying he hadn't travelled in the previous 14 days which was in some border form rather than the visa application.

True his agent didn't tick a box - border agents didn't give him enough time to explain and this is why the first visa rejection was overturned as far as I understand it. So that wasn't really an issue.

People keep saying "no specific exemptions for being a famous tennis player" but he was treated worse for being a famous tennis player - right from the start where the border agents canceled the visa without him having the time to explain to where the minister then canceled it himself in an expedited over-the-weekend procedure just so that he cannot appeal and play in the mean time. I mean - I have no special love for him, but it does seem that he got treated worse than an average guy.

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