Another Australian Open tennis tournament, another Novak Djokovic media sensation. As play gets under way at Melbourne Park, Djokovic the showman has been working the Australian media, as well as doing a glossy spread for the upmarket US magazine, GQ. The common thread of his media commentary is his experience coming to the 2022 Australian Open when, as the Covid-19 pandemic still raged, the unvaccinated Djokovic was detained and deported after seeking to enter Melbourne, the city oppressed by arguably the most draconian lockdown and vaccination mandates in the world, let alone Australia.

Having initially been given an exemption to enter Victoria by the state’s government, Djokovic was stopped on arrival by the Australian Border Force; until he won a legal challenge in the Federal Court of Australia, he was detained in a Melbourne hotel converted into a detention facility for illegal arrivals. He could not, however, win a second challenge against Australia’s immigration minister, who personally cancelled his visa and ordered him to leave the country.

The minister’s official reasons, upheld by the court, were that Djokovic’s behaviour posed a risk to both public health and public order, given his status as a public figure and role model. ‘I consider that behaviour by influential persons and role models, which demonstrates a failure to comply with, or a disregard of, public health measures has the potential to undermine the efficacy and consistency of the Australian Government’s and State and Territory Governments’ management of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic,’ wrote the Federal Court’s chief justice. And so the Djoker was played.

But, for the 24-time Grand Slam winner, it wasn’t over. Three years on, his 2022 experience clearly gnaws at him. Interviewed by Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper in a front-page splash, Djokovic confided that, every time he arrives in Australia, he is filled with dread.

‘I have to be frank,’ he told the newspaper, ‘the last couple of times I landed in Australia, to go through passport control and immigration – I had a bit of trauma from three years ago…the person checking my passport – are they going to take me, detain or let me go?’

That the Australian government waived the normal three-year ban on re-entry to the country after his deportation, and that he has returned every year since – and went home with the title in 2023 – seemingly hasn’t erased Djokovic’s belief that he was the only real victim of the 2022 visa fiasco, and that his immigration detention in the run-down former hotel effectively made him a political prisoner.

But while this is a repeat of the same Djokovic tune, this year it’s a theme with a new variation. Sensationally, he told GQ magazine that in his five days in immigration detention he was ‘poisoned’.

Returning to Serbia, he told the magazine: ‘I had some health issues. And I realised that in that hotel in Melbourne I was fed with some food that poisoned me.” Asked why, he added: ‘Well, I had some discoveries when I came back to Serbia. I never told this to anybody publicly, but discoveries that I was, I had a really high level of heavy metal. Heavy metal. I had the lead, very high level of lead and mercury. [From the food] that’s the only way.’

The Spectator approached the Australian Border Force for comment, and a spokesperson said privacy legislation forbids commenting on any specific case. The Australian Department of Home Affairs, however, was responsible for running the hotel facility for all detainees housed there. The hotel was licensed by public health authorities for food preparation and provision, and catering staff were fully trained. Detainees had access to a variety of food and beverages, which department sources say was nutritious, culturally appropriate and met specific medical and/or dietary requirements.

Tellingly for Djokovic’s accusation, commencing on 31 December 2021 – a fortnight before his unwilling arrival there – and as part of ongoing quality assurance, the Park Hotel facility began providing the detention authority with sample meals of the food provided to the detainees at every meal service. If Djokovic was poisoned, so would have been the tasters.

The truth or otherwise of Djokovic’s allegation likely lies elsewhere in his GQ interview. ‘When it comes to food,’ he said, ‘I’m quite religious. I like things to be clean and freshly prepared. I don’t like to be very – what do you call it? – explorer-like. Especially during a tournament.’

In other words, the grub served to Djokovic in detention was good enough for everyone else, but fell far short of his own fastidious, even obsessive culinary standards. Admittedly, the facility’s menu was not intended for a high-performance athlete, and certainly not the then world number one tennis player. But ‘poisoning’ him? That seems unlikely.

Time and hindsight may or may not have vindicated Djokovic’s non-vaccination stance in terms of the risks. But what is clear is that the way he was treated by Australian authorities was shambolic. While being in the cosseted bubble of elite tennis may explain Djokovic’s perceptions of his treatment in 2022, nevertheless it seems that he still lacks the self-awareness to understand that he was subjected briefly to a repressive Covid regime that had, by then, been endured by millions of Melburnians for almost two years. The intrusions on his personal liberty were actually mild compared to ordinary people’s hundreds of days of forced lockdowns and curfews, with vicious mask and especially vaccine mandates adding to the pain, dislocation and distress.

However reluctantly we did so, in the dark Covid times most Melburnians accepted we had to obey lawful authority, even when the restrictions and loss of personal liberty imposed on us seemed farcically extreme. In continuing to believe he was singled out and targeted because of ‘politics’, Djokovic fails to understand why it was that the then Australian government deported him and why, at the time, opinion polls showed most Australians agreed wholeheartedly with the decision.

Covid-scarred Melburnians have moved on. So should Djokovic. Good luck to him in the 2025 Australian Open.