Candace Owens Banned from Australia

Candace Owens has been definitively banned from Australia after the country's highest court ruled her views were 'extremist and inflammatory', and that she failed the country's 'character test.'

Despite Owens' standing among the US's conservative movement, the influencer's visa was rejected in October 2024 when then Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said her 'controversial and conspiratorial views' were unwelcome in their country.

On her podcast last year, Owens said her opposition to Israel's war was the real reason she was banned Down Under.

'I am not comfortable with the amount of death that is in Gaza,' she said at the time. 'That is the reason that the Zionist Federation of Australia has come after me.'

Despite Owens' appeal making it to Australia's High Court, the Justices rejected her argument that denying entry breached Australia's implied freedom of political communication.

Instead, the court stated that Owens' presence and influence would 'incite discord' in the community, pointing to her comments on Muslin, Black, Jewish, and LGBTQIA+ people.

The court ordered Owens, 36, to pay the hearing's legal costs.

Owens sought entrance to Australia for her live podcast tour which was rescheduled from November 2025 to January 2026 amid her legal battle.

In February, Owens announced the High Court trial on her podcast and revealed that her first visa was rejected publicly before she'd even applied.

'We are going to bump our tour hoping that they return this most crucial decision on free speech. Obviously we don't know what is going to happen,' she said.

Owens is the second American to be publicly denied from Australia this year.

Kanye West's valid Australian visa was canceled in July after his song Heil Hitler was released.

According to BBC, Minister Burke explained that West had been coming to the country 'for a long time' thanks to his Australian fashion designer wife Bianca Censori.

'If someone argued that anti-Semitism was rational,' he said. 'I would not let them come here.'

The song was banned from most platforms.

In April, a petition to the Australian House of Representatives even demanded that the government ban President Donald Trump from the country.

'We don't need Trump here, a Putin-aligned dictator who is spreading misinformation, hate speech and stands for the opposite of what we do,' read the petition.

'His actions are hurting and endangering OUR COUNTRY and we should ban him from coming here as an agent of hate and a danger to world peace.'

It received nearly 3,000 signatures.

During her struggle to enter the country, Owens was outspokenly critical about Australian policies.

In November 2024, she said the country's plan to ban social media for children under the age of 16 'would never fly in America.'

Owens also called an Australian motion to require health warnings on individual cigarettes 'completely ridiculous.'

She told Daily Mail that the court's decision would be 'a stain on Australia.'

'And not one that you're easily going to wipe away.'