World No. 1 Novak Djokovic (Image: John Walton/PA Wire)

The Federal Circuit Court simply wasn’t ready for Novak Djokovic. At 10am — the scheduled start time for a hearing to determine whether the tennis star would be allowed to stay in Australia — the live stream buckled under the weight of demand from journalists, legal observers and Djokovic fans the world over, forcing a delay in proceedings.

Many of the foreign observers who persevered through numerous interruptions — and aided by bootleg links spread through Twitter DMs and a tennis podcast’s YouTube live stream — might have been a little bored and confused. Djokovic’s barrister, Nick Wood SC, took Judge Anthony Kelly through a series of highly technical provisions of the Migration Act as he sought to establish the home affairs minister and Border Force did not have valid grounds to cancel the Serbian’s visa. 

But amid the hours of dense legalese, two key bright spots emerged for Djokovic. Kelly appeared troubled by treatment of a medical exemption provided to Djokovic by Tennis Australia.

“Here, a professor and an eminently qualified physician have produced and provided to the applicant a medical exemption,” Kelly said. “The point I am agitated about is: what more could this man have done?”

The court also published an order allowing Djokovic to leave the Park Hotel in Carlton where he has been detained to view the hearing. 

With the government beginning its submissions this afternoon, there’s still some way to go before we know Djokovic’s fate. But regardless of what Kelly ultimately rules, the whole fiasco has taught the world a few things about Australia — and not just that our internet infrastructure is crummy.

For starters, the sometimes banal, arbitrary nature of our border regime is in the spotlight. It’s a system where a single minister has immense discretion about who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come, and where protracted legal battles over a stray subsection of the Migration Act are common. And it’s a system where about two dozen asylum seekers have been indefinitely detained in the same hotel now housing the world number one.

As Djokovic and his family complain about the conditions in the Park Hotel, refugee advocates hope asylum seekers who’ve stayed there for months won’t be forgotten. Last year, some found maggots in their food, and many became sick during a COVID outbreak.

The Djokovic case also shows that even as zero COVID Fortress Australia becomes as virus-riddled as the rest of the world, the impulse to maintain strict, seemingly arbitrary border controls remains both strong and politically popular. Even if Djokovic is allowed to stay, the heightened muscularity of our border restrictions in the name of COVID will take some time to wind back.

On a final, possibly brighter note, the case has firmed up Australia’s reputation as a great dystopia to reactionary trolls, anti-vaxxers and far-right politicians the world over. Comments on the unofficial YouTube stream were clogged with the racism and misinformation that platform is famed for.

Meanwhile the most vocal voices in Djokovic’s corner are people like former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage (supposedly a fan of Australia’s refugee policies) and Serbia’s nationalist President Aleksandar Vučić (a fawning admirer of some of his country’s most violent genocidaires).

Whatever happens to Djokovic — who could’ve avoided this saga simply by being vaccinated — at least this process has made some terrible people extremely mad.

The hearing continues.