Kanye West has been denied entry to Australia after releasing a song titled “Heil Hitler”, which immigration officials deemed to promote Nazism.
Speaking to the ABC, Immigration Minister Tony Burke confirmed that West, who now goes by Ye, had a valid visa cancelled by his department earlier this year, following the track’s release.
“He’s made a lot of offensive comments that my officials looked at again once he released [that] song,” Burke said. “He’s got family here … It wasn’t a visa for the purpose of concerts. It was a lower-level [visa] and the officials still looked at the law and said if you’re going to have a song and promote that sort of Nazism, we don’t need that in Australia.”
The remarks came during a wider discussion about visa policy and hate speech, in which Burke also addressed the cancellation of Israeli-American tech advocate Hillel Fuld’s speaking tour visa over Islamophobic remarks.
“If someone argued that antisemitism was rational, I would not let them come here on a speaking tour. And if someone has the same view of Islamophobia, I don’t want them here when the purpose of the visa is to give public speeches,” Burke said.
He added that while a “stricter line” is usually applied to visitors intending to speak publicly, West’s was “the only instance I could recall” of a visa being cancelled that wasn’t for advocacy purposes.
The rapper’s “Heil Hitler”, released in May as part of his album WW3, drew immediate backlash for its glorification of Adolf Hitler and overt Nazi references. The music video featured a group of men in animal skins chanting the song’s title. It was banned from major streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
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While Burke didn’t confirm whether the visa refusal amounts to a permanent ban, he clarified that “visa applications are reassessed each time in accordance with the law.”
“I’m not taking away the way the act operates,” he said. “But even for the lowest level of visa, when my officials looked at it, they cancelled that following the announcement of that song. We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry.”
The rapper has repeatedly sparked outrage for antisemitic remarks — in 2022, sportswear giant Adidas announced it was ending its partnership with West, reaching an out of court settlement last year — and, earlier this year, declared himself a Nazi.
Speculation around West’s ability to visit Australia has been ongoing since 2023, when then-Education Minister Jason Clare publicly condemned the rapper’s comments about Hitler and the Holocaust, suggesting they would be grounds for visa refusal. Civil rights organisations also called for Ye to be banned from Australia following his remarks at the time.
Though West later released a revised version of “Heil Hitler”, retitled “Hallelujah” and replacing the Nazi references with references of Christianity instead, the original song had already racked up millions of views and stirred international controversy.
