Coppers or wallopers for law-abiding folk. Pigs for those with a slightly different view of the constabulary.
Actually, it would be the Australian Federal Police who would be there to escort Novax off the court, and we uniformly refer to them as Sir/Madam.
It is a strong message and one that I suspect the vast majority of Australians will be behind.
Agreed, although there’s always the die-hard sports followers who rant and rail against ‘the authorities’ when something akin to this comes up. It’s almost like their heroes/heroines are beyond the law or something.
Anyway, Novax will be back into Immigration Detention for the weekend at least I imagine. It’s not a Holiday Inn there. 
Maybe for the moment, but I think in retrospect we are going to look pretty shit.
As late as November Djokovic said that if he had to get vaccinated he wasn’t coming.
So we told him that he could get an exemption and still come. So he got one. When he boarded the plane it was valid to get him in to the country. By the time the plane landed it wasn’t.
If we had stuck to - no jab, no entry - he would never have come. Instead we lured him to come here, changed the rules on him and ended up banning him from the country (possibly for years) using a discretion not subject to natural law.
I wonder what the Open organisers will do. On the basis of this decision will they remove him from the draw immediately? Give an alternate a chance to prepare properly?
But according to the latest intel, the ‘exemption’ may have been granted under false pretences, so I have zilch-factor sympathy for him, and for once I agree with the gummint, a miracle in itself given their previous history with Covid management.
I think it was encumbent on him to ensure that the information behind his visa was honest and accurate (which we don’t know) and that he shows he can be trusted to stick to the rules in place (which he hasn’t).
He has hardly been a model of openess, consistency and diligence has he?
All those doubts about the information that he used to get the visa may be valid. But they also may not. He may really have had Covid.
But, in any case, it is a fuck up of our making. As I said if we had stuck to no jab, no visa he wouldn’t be here.
And don’t think that I have any sympathy for him or his anti-vax stance. It just feels like entrapment to get the guy here and go through all this, when it so easily could have been avoided.
Knowing Tennis Australia they’ll go to the Victorian Government and ask for a bail-out.
I’m guessing that Djokovic won’t be coming to Australia again.
Because the Aust Open is usually played in excruciatingly hot conditions and requiring the top northern hemisphere players to fry whilst away from family over the Christmas/New Year period it will put further pressure downgrading it as the 4th Grand Slam.
As to this tournament; they’ll offer a wildcard to the best player available, who’ll be a local on the satellite circuit.
Melbourne detention centres are crap. But I’ve Christmas Island and Nauru are nice at this time of year. 
Yes, he could indeed have avoided it. He was trying to entrap the Aus government and tennis officials for his own personal advantage. Why give him a free pass? Other players who had attempted to use the same ruse as Novax have voluntarily returned home without drama…only Djokovic tried to stare us down. Well, fuck 'im.
It appears that Djokovic will attend an interview with immigration officials tomorrow, and he will stay out of detention until then.
Lucky fella. Shame that other people who land on our shores without the proper paperwork are not afforded the same concessions.
Pour encourager les autres
Can’t believe those Djokovic supporters who tried to spin this incident as a deliberate slap in the face to the entire Serb nation. Even the president of Serbia cried “political persecution.”
Patriotism really is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Djokovic has been granted a hearing with Judge Kelly at 8:45pm AEDT ( in a few minutes).
I think the origins of that term would give Djokovic more nobility than he is warranted.
I also think anyone else who had shown such public disregard for the rules would be treated in much the same, if not an even more harsh way.
Certainly “not my fault, my agent did it” has rarely worked as a line of defence. Your application, your liability.
Nor has “I knew it was wrong but didn’t want to let a journalist down” been sufficient justification for choosing not to isolate.
If anything he has been given a huge amount of leeway. Were it you or I we’d probably have been out on our arses by now.
I say all this with the open admission that I suspected right from the start that…
a) Tennis Australia would do pretty much anything to ensure Djokovic played
b) That once the exemption possibility was raised, Djokovic would magically be entitled to it.
Which are pretty low bars as far as predictions go, I’m far from the only person who thought as much.
So I’m definitely biased but I’ve seen little in his behaviour throughout this incident that makes me think he is an honest actor.
Live stream of hearing, about to start before Judge Kelly:
AP article:
Okay, so here’s the outcome of the hearing Friday evening (local time):
The most interesting thing that came up in the hearing was the grounds for cancelling the visa – apparently the Minister says that not to cancel it will encourage anti-vaxxers, and “excite anti-vax sentiment”.