First of all, people can say whatever they want, so what.
Secondly, I don't think he had broken any of the country's laws until this form thing. I'm still not sure he has, but he may have. A lot of people, though, fill out forms wrongly, but maybe he did this on purpose.
Of course, Australians decide who comes in to their country. But personally, I think this whole stand has been silly. It's not personal against Australians, I'd say the same thing if the U.S. were doing it. Athletes who come to compete in a country aren't looking to live there.
I just don't believe tennis players who haven't been vaccinated right now are a threat to any country, especially as they could dictate his behavior.
But Australia can do what it wants. They could declare tomorrow no Catholics can enter the country.
Of course, he is entitled to the presumption of innocence in a legal sense, so I'll be careful here. But it would normally be very easy to get a guilty verdict on the form question. It's a very simple yes/no question that actually tells you it's a serious offence to get it wrong. And claiming it was a mistake would generally not lead to any other verdict, especially in a case where it is reasonable to believe he should have known this was important.
And this is on top of the mistakes he made in assuming he had legitimate entry papers. He's already been given the benefit of the doubt on that one, because it was genuinely complex and could have been confusing. But there's a limit to how many times, you get the benefit of the doubt.
Then we have the fact that his statements in court about a fairly important issue are contradicted by a later statement he made outside the court. Is that a third mistake?
It's probably irrelevant in Australian law because there hasn't been a finding of guilt in either country, but the suggestions that he evaded Spanish border controls, and that he broke Serbian law - are these mistakes as well?
Or are they part of a pattern of somebody who just doesn't believe rules should apply to him, and he can ignore them whenever he likes?
I don't know what the Minister is going to do (and I do have 'contacts' in the government and I have tried to get the scoop without success this time - and, yes, that's pushing rules myself) but I do know that all of this makes it much more likely, he will deport.
I don't want Djokovic deported - but it'd be a lot easier for me to support that if I wasn't so worried about the fact that people think the border security stuff isn't important. I'm beginning to think we need to demonstrate to the world that we do still take it seriously.
Whenever our border security has been seen as lax, we've faced large incursions of illegal immigrants arriving by boat on our northwestern shores. As well as the problems that causes us, hundreds of people die trying to do that when it happens. This is the primary reason why Australia takes this so seriously. We have some of the strongest border laws in the world. Deliberately. To send a message we need to send.
We cannot afford people to think those laws are weak.
Actually - that's about the only thing that we couldn't constitutionally do. Just about the only right clearly and unambiguously described in the Constitution is freedom of religion.
(This was because the writers of the constitution felt all other rights were adequately protected by English Common Law, but England had an established Church so Common Law gave no freedom of religion protection. So they pretty much copied part of the US First Amendment.)