‘S***show’: Hosts react to Djokovic farce

The Serbian tennis star could potentially have his visa cancelled again on a character basis, despite successfully appealing his initial cancellation this week at a federal court hearing.

Former Immigration Department Deputy Secretary Abul Rizvi said the case “is a hard one” for Australian authorities, who he believes are currently scrambling to damage-control the situation after numerous procedural mistakes were unearthed.

“There is no easy option here,” Mr Rizvi told The Project on Wednesday night.

“Cancellation is difficult and not cancelling is difficult. If I might go through the processes in terms of cancellation.”

Mr Rizvi went on to detail the potential PR nightmare that would unfold in front of the world’s media if the Immigration Minister indeed moved to deport Djokovic on character grounds.

“Let‘s assume the Minister does proceed to cancel Mr Djokovic’s visa,” he continued.

“He would then have the cancellation notice taken by Australian Border Force, who usually dress in very, very dark uniforms and often carry guns, turning up to Mr Djokovic’s or on the tennis court, taking Mr Djokovic away from the tennis court, most likely in the glare of the world‘s media.”

Mr Rizvi said Djokovic would then be taken “to a detention centre where he would remain while he sought any application for judicial or other review processes”.

“That could well mean he is in detention, in Melbourne, while the Australian Open is on going,” he said.

“At this point, I suspect all of the discussion are about the politics and the optics. What is the best way of presenting this to the Australian people, such that the optics look favourable to the Government? That would be a discussion going on between various ministers and the Prime Minister‘s office.”

The issue has brought heavy attention on Australia as the world turns its gaze to the first grand slam of the year, with several supporters of Djokovic blasting the confusing nature of the developing case.

Mr Rizvi said the next steps could define how Australia deals with future issues regarding vaccination and visas.

“What it tells us is if we can implement an effective and efficient process, whereby if people are applying to come to Australia and need to be vaccinated, we deal with that before we grant them the visa before they can come into the country,” he said.

“Trying to deal with those sort of issues after they have come into the country is really poor practice and runs against 30 years of immigration system development.”

“What a sh**show,” Project host Jan Fran said as the segment concluded, summing up just about everyone’s reaction – regardless of their opinion – to the farce.

Australian Border Force officials have investigated whether Djokovic lied on his entry form to come into the country.

On his travel declaration form — which formed part of court documents released on Monday — the Serbian ticked a box saying he had not travelled, and was not planning to travel, in the 14 days before his flight Down Under.

However, Djokovic faced allegations that he travelled from Serbia to Spain in the 14 days before he flew to Australia last week.

The Home Affairs Department warns on its website that giving false or misleading information to the government is “a serious offence” carrying a possible jail term.

Djokovic has now confessed to the “human error”, claiming it was “certainly not deliberate”. He blamed “challenging times in a global pandemic” for the mistake.

Originally published as The Project: Immigration expert weighs in on the next step for Novak Djokovic