[marktwain]

Ping on Australian news to Naturalman1975

I would like to hear your take on this development.

[naturalman1975]

I'm heading to bed, as it's well after midnight here.

I have been discussing it on another thread -

Briefly - I would like Djokovic to be able to play.

But the current situation puts Australia's border security at risk for various reasons, I've done my best to outline elsewhere.

I am hoping the current court case will end in a ruling that allows him to play, but avoids the negative border security outcomes that Monday's ruling created.

There's at least a couple of ways I think that could happen legally - and there may be others I do not know about.

I think Americans are seeing this through a lens that has been severely distorted by months and months of misinformation about Australia. They think this is mostly about issues that really aren't an important part of the big picture.

At the core of this is the basic statement that lies at the heart of Australian border security policy, and has for over twenty years.

We decide who comes to Australia, and the circumstances under which they come. That policy is absolutely rigid, and no exceptions are made.

And American conservatives used to celebrate that aspect of Australian border policy. Hell, just after he was elected, President Trump told our then Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, he wished he could copy it.

[Gay State Conservative]

Unless I've misunderstood 9a distinct possibility) naturalman is in favor of this.In one of his posts he basically summed up his position by saying something like “we decide who enters and who doesn't”. Of course that attitude would be absolutely understandable if we were talking about thousands of disease ridden Indonesians...or even one such Indonesian.

But I wonder if he understands the “nuances” here....one guy,a citizen of the European Union,not disease ridden,not likely to claim asylum,not likely to apply for benefits and not likely to advocate the violent overthrow of the government.Add to that the fact that he only wants to stay for a couple of weeks *and* that his presence will raise the importance of a tournament that goes a long way toward boosting the image of that small nation and you have the argument for making an exception.