I have the same understanding from US media, that the whole exemption thing was bogus or speculative to begin with and he essentially tried to bluff his way in. If true I’d like to see take a one year tennis ban. What bullshit.
It just sounds so idiotic. It can’t possibly end any other way. Moreover, doesn’t the tournament have rules? Even if he gets in the country, does it mean he automatically gets to play? Or do the Aussie Open organizers just say, as long as you can get to the court, you’re good to go.
Yeah, it’s all a bit unclear but it appears that the wrong-visa thing was just bad information. At any rate the PM has said that he was informed directly that Djokovic did not have an exemption, so that seems certain to be true. Maybe there was a mixup in layers of bureaucracy, like just because Tennis Australia and the state of Victoria say you’re good to go, that does not mean you’re cleared to enter Australia as far as Border Force are concerned. Maybe his team didn’t know that.
It’s all pretty silly honestly and as far as I’m concerned prior infection should be fine, but as I’ve said, behaving like you don’t have to follow the rules because you’re rich or famous always meets with social backlash here. You can imagine the extent to which this is exacerbated in a city which suffered hard lockdown for over 200 days earlier in the pandemic. Before he was refused entry, the Victorian government were making noises about maybe cancelling his visa (which the state can do for the particular type of visa he got). It’s going to be politically popular.
An announcement was made by the tournament organizers that he had an exemption. That doesn’t mean the border guards have to honor that. I’m researching right now whether the exemption announced by the organizers was recognized by the government, though state officials left open the possibility that an exemption could be granted. I saw that around 2 dozen staff and players applied for exemptions, 3 quarters were rejected.
Yeah if I had to guess, he got an exemption from the tournament directors and thought this would be sufficient to enter the country, but I’m just speculating.
Didn’t someone (possibly you) post that the whole exemption process was rigorous and blinded with names removed? I seriously doubt the tournament organizers are going through all that. And if that wasn’t the organizers, then who was it?
There’s a piece here from Melbourne newspaper The Age which sheds some light.
Cliffs:
Representatives of the Federal Government twice wrote to Tennis Australia advising them that unvaccinated people could not travel to Australia and that prior infection was not good enough.
The state of Victoria, on the other hand, appears to have issued him an exemption:
A Victorian government spokesperson said: “Two independent medical panels assessed his medical exemption application, to play in the tournament. It had nothing to do with his visa application which has always been a matter for the Federal Government.”
Either Tennis Australia failed to pass on the Federal Government’s advice to players, or they did and Djokovic’s team decided to ignore it.
Yes it was supposedly blinded applications to a board created by Tennis Australia and one created by the Victorian government for the special visa issued to sports people. My guess is he then ran his mouth and the federal government wasn’t happy about that and stopped him. We will never know what really happened unless Novak comes clean about his exemption and the documentation for it. Of course that is not going to happen because refusing to do that is how this all started.
Will never happen but if he knew he wasn’t cleared to get into the country and tried to bullshit (at a minimum) he should be permabanned from Australia and trnnis should bench him for a full year. What an asshole.
(Apologies to Novax if Im wrong but he doesn’t get much benefit of the doubt)
I like Mina as much as the next bloke, but she missed on the dunk. Given the start date of the Aussie Open, there is no way he can get vaxxed in time. So unless her comment is based on some deep knowledge of Aussie visa policy, it really is unclear what he can do.
I’d probably never try to dunk on Mina (i.e. tweet it at her). She’s one of my favorites. I cut her plenty of slack. After all, no one is 100%, especially people who comment on sports.
They’re gonna smash 5 percent next week in most schools would be my prediction. Somewhere is trying this (want to say Montgomery County) and went from like 11 schools over 5 percent to 126 in like two days and Georgia seems slightly behind the northeast with this wave.
Not far off from my current school framework and we are going to try and open, but current positivity was something like 20 percent in latest surveillance testing.
Even without full shutdowns there’s going to be a large percentage of the population just missing school.
Don’t have a great answer, there aren’t any at 2 millions cases a day or w/e we really are.