The fiasco has taught the world a few things about Australia — and not just that our internet infrastructure is crummy.
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.