(Image: PA Wire/Adam Davy)

With Novak Djokovic now back under northern skies, we should take a good, hard look at the brouhaha around his case.

Sure, it’s been the impetus for a dozen lessons — how not to scam the system; how the left and the right can be united on a common cause; the might of public opinion; the importance of being honest when filling out forms; even the power of the pro-vaccine message within Australia.

But perhaps the greatest lesson to come out of the 34-year-old’s week from hell is how the Australian court system works, and how it could work immeasurably better and fairer.

Routinely, urgent domestic violence cases take weeks before being heard before the same court: weeks when a woman might be living in fear of her life; weeks when a father is unable to see the children who belong in his house; weeks when children are shunted between angry adults, sometimes being subjected to violence along the way.

Kelli Martin, a family and domestic violence lawyer in Queensland, was planning a LinkedIn post about gratitude when news lobbed last Friday that Novak Djokovic would have his case heard in an out-of-hours session.

Instead, the intended message about gratitude became a frustrated post about equity. As a lawyer dealing in high-risk cases in family courts on a daily basis, she is often consoling parents terrified their children are in danger. And she knows an “urgent” court date in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, as it is now known after its merger last year, means two to four weeks from filing details.

“I accept this is alleged to be ‘in the public interest’ but how the HELL do the Australian government put the rights of an unvaccinated tennis player before the rights of abused women and children across Australia,” she asked.

Her followers — many of them lawyers before the same court — jumped to support her, raising the point that Djokovic was sharing the same hotel with refugees who had been languishing for years, not yet having had their day in court.

“This case just highlights that justice isn’t blind — it’s white, rich and famous,” another lawyer commented. Others told Martin about cases where they had sought urgent hearings and then had to wait… and wait… and wait.

“To have a judge sitting at 8.45pm on a Friday night and then a full bench … sitting on a Sunday in my recollection is very unusual,” Martin told Crikey yesterday.

“Over Christmas I dealt with a parent whose two-year-old child hadn’t been returned on Christmas Day, and we didn’t get a hearing until last Thursday.”

(It took 10 days to get a hearing once she had filed notice — but over Christmas and New Year it was even difficult to lodge that.)

“So 10 days to two weeks is what they deem to be an urgent hearing — and that’s even after the changes to the court have been made, which were meant to speed up the system … but you will never hear of a judge in a family law matter. I’ve never heard of a judge having a matter listed at 8.45pm at night.”

Why? Why is a top tennis player able to activate our court system to hear late-night and all-day Sunday evidence when Australian families, fighting to keep or collect their children, don’t have the same access? Under any measure, is that fair?

And the wait is longer for those who cannot source a lawyer — because they don’t often know what to argue to ensure the case is heard with any sense of urgency.

Like hundreds and hundreds of other family and domestic violence lawyers, Martin has cases in urgent need of hearing. Like the father who hasn’t seen his children since last March. She filed that case in October last year. The case, she says, involves “some significant risk issues”. 

The interim hearing is now scheduled for February, almost one year since these children have felt the warmth of their father’s hug.

“Children’s lives are being affected deeply by the delays in the family court system,” Martin says. “And yet a privileged tennis player gets two hearings on a weekend, one in front of three Federal Court judges which took all day on a Sunday!”

It’s wrong. It’s unfair. And it risks the health, welfare and happiness of our children. 

Novak Djokovic’s access to judges on the weekend has simply exposed the shabbiness the rest of us face — and the need for our political parties to promise immediate change.

Have you experienced slack or shabby treatment from our legal system? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.