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Kanye West could be denied entry visa to Australia says MP
The Australian Minister for Education condemned West's “awful” antisemitic comments involving Hitler and the Holocaust
January 25, 2023 13:57
The Australian Minister for Education condemned West's “awful” antisemitic comments involving Hitler and the Holocaust
January 25, 2023 13:57Antisemitic rapper Kanye West may not be allowed an Australian visa to visit his new girlfriend’s family because of controversy following his public fall from grace late last year.
An Australian politician, Minister for Education Jason Clare, condemned West's “awful” antisemitic comments involving Hitler and the Holocaust, saying others who had made similar statements had been denied visas.
“Google it and you’ll see that it seems like he’s a pretty big fan of a person who killed six million Jewish people last century,” Clare said.
The MP did not know if Ye had applied for a visa but that “people like that who’ve applied for visas to get into Australia in the past have been rejected.
“I expect that if he does apply he would have to go through the same process and answer the same questions that they did.”
I was asked about Kanye on Today 👇 pic.twitter.com/3GEPhdv6Sb
— Jason Clare MP (@JasonClareMP) January 24, 2023
The MP was responding on Wednesday to media reports that the US rapper intended to visit the family of his new Australian partner Bianca Censori in Melbourne next week.
The rapper was locked out of his Twitter account last year after announcing he would go "death con 3" on Jewish people, in a mistaken use of the US military heightened alert status DEFCON 3. In December, West said: "I see good things about Hitler... This guy [Adolf Hitler] that invented highways and invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good. I’m done with that.
"Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler."
He has also tweeted a picture of a swastika and denied the Holocaust.
Peter Wertheim, the head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, met officials on Tuesday to argue in favour of banning the musician.
"We had a sympathetic hearing," Wertheim told Sky News.
"We've made the case that this particular individual does not meet the character test and that it would be in the national interest not to grant him a visa and we set out our reasons in some detail in that letter."
The Australian Opposition leader Peter Dutton said that he would be inclined to ban Ye but it was a decision for the government. "His antisemitic comments are disgraceful, his conduct, his behaviour are appalling," he told 3AW radio.
"He's not a person of good character and the minister has the ability to stop somebody coming into our country of bad character."