Australian minister cited US influencer’s public feedback downplaying the Holocaust and making Islamophobic remarks.
Revealed On 15 Oct 2025
Far-right American influencer Candace Owens has misplaced a authorized bid to be allowed to enter Australia after a courtroom dominated with the federal government that granting her a customer visa might “incite discord within the Australian neighborhood”.
The Excessive Court docket of Australia mentioned in its ruling on Wednesday that the federal government’s choice to refuse Owens a visa in 2024 “was not invalid” and ordered her to pay the federal government’s authorized prices within the case.
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The courtroom “unanimously” dominated that the article in Australia’s Migration Act utilized by the federal government in opposition to Owens “applies the place, within the occasion that the individual had been allowed to enter or to stay in Australia, there’s a danger that the individual would fire up or encourage dissension or strife within the Australian neighborhood, or a section of that neighborhood”.
Owens, a well known right-wing podcast host and political pundit who has constructed a big on-line following for controversial views and conspiracy theories, utilized for an Australian visa to undertake a business talking tour in November 2024.
Australia’s Residence Affairs Minister Tony Burke – who has the powers to disclaim noncitizens entry primarily based on a “character check” – rejected Owens’s software in October 2024 because of the danger of her views “resulting in elevated hostility and violent or radical motion”.
Burke had cited her public feedback on the Holocaust and different Islamophobic remarks.
“From downplaying the affect of the Holocaust with feedback about Mengele by means of to claims that Muslims began slavery, Candace Owens has the capability to incite discord in virtually each route,” the minister mentioned final yr, in response to Australia’s Herald Solar information outlet, referring to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who performed experiments on Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz.
The Excessive Court docket of Australia has delivered its ruling within the battle between Immigration Minister Tony Burke and a controversial American right-wing influencer. > https://t.co/Caf2KV6zMQ pic.twitter.com/Gyi8l6kkKm
— Herald Solar (@theheraldsun) October 15, 2025
Owens appealed the minister’s choice to the Excessive Court docket on the grounds that refusing her a visa infringed on freedom of political communication, although in Australia – in contrast to the US – there isn’t a categorical constitutional proper to free speech.
“The implied freedom will not be a ‘private proper’, will not be limitless and isn’t absolute,” Excessive Court docket Judges Stephen Gageler, Michelle Gordon and Robert Beech-Jones mentioned of their joint judgement on the case.
The judges famous that Burke had denied Owens a visa after inspecting her views and feedback on areas together with antiracism, Black Lives Matter, anti-Semitism, girls’s and LGBTQ rights, COVID-19 and anti-vaccination.
Burke had discovered her views to be “extremist and inflammatory feedback in the direction of Muslim, Black, Jewish and LGBTQIA+ communities which generate controversy and hatred”, and the minister concluded that she had failed the “character check” required for a visa and that permitting her into the nation wouldn’t be within the nationwide curiosity, the judges mentioned.
Owens’s “submissions needs to be emphatically rejected”, Excessive Court docket Choose James Edelman mentioned in a separate judgement.
In July, Australia additionally cancelled the visa of US rapper Ye, previously referred to as Kanye West, over issues he would have promoted Nazi ideologies in his track “Heil Hitler”.
