Chris Brown May Be The Latest Performer Banned From Australia
A couple of months ago, Tyler, The Creator claimed on Twitter that he was banned from Australia. He wasn’t actually officially banned from the country, though — the feminist organization Collective Shout had been petitioning Australia’s immigration minister to deny Tyler’s visa due to his offensive lyrics, and Tyler just ended up canceling the dates over the controversy. But now, it looks like Chris Brown may actually be getting banned from Australia, officially, for being a shitty person.
Brown has toured in Australia twice (in 2011 and 2012) since pleading guilty to assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009, and he was set to perform several shows there in December, but The Guardian reports that the singer has had his visa application formally denied on character grounds. According to immigration minister Peter Dutton, Brown was issued a formal notice that his application would be denied on Friday night, and he now has 28 days to appeal. “People to whom these notices are issued have 28 days to present material as to why they should be given a visa to enter Australia,” Dutton said in a statement today. “Decisions on whether a visa will or will not be issued are made after that timeframe and consideration of the material presented to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.”
On Thursday, Australia’s newly appointed women’s minister Michaelia Cash strongly recommended that Brown’s application be denied: “People need to understand if you are going to commit domestic violence and then you want to travel around the world, there are going to be countries that say to you ‘You cannot come in because you are not of the character we expect in Australia,'” she said. “And certainly, without pre-empting the decision of the minister, I can assure you it is something that the minister is looking at.”
As of now, an online petition by advocacy group GetUp calling for Brown to be banned from the country has received over 14,000 signatures. If Brown does end up getting blocked from performing, it wouldn’t be the first time — the UK barred him from entering the country in 2010, and he was denied entry at the Canadian border earlier this year.