Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has issued a warning to Kanye West: Be vaccinated, or you can’t tour here.
Morrison’s mandate comes following a report that West has sought to stage a concert at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium in March, prior to his headlining gigs at Coachella the next month.
Following Australia’s deportation of Novak Djokovic after the unvaccinated tennis star’s visa application was denied prior to the Australia Open, Morrison issued a statement in response to whether he would allow West — whose own vaccination status is in question — to perform a concert in the country.
“The rules are you have to be fully vaccinated, they’re the rules,” Morrison said. “They apply to everybody as people have seen. It doesn’t matter who you are, they’re the rules. Follow the rules [and] you can come, if you don’t follow the rules you can’t.”
Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley added, “I don’t, frankly, know Mr. West’s vaccination status… apparently Mr. West claims to be vaccinated,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
In a July 2020 interview, West said he was suspicious of any Covid-19 vaccine, calling it “the mark of the beast.” “So when they say the way we’re going to fix Covid is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious,” West told Forbes at the time. “They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of heaven.”
However, during his Drink Champs interview in Nov. 2021, West admitted, “I only got one of the shots, so I’m half-ccinated.” West didn’t specify which shot he received — the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine — or whether he ultimately received a second shot if required.
While West has not yet announced a tour in support of Donda and his upcoming Donda 2, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Friday that West’s team approached the Australian Football League with a request to relocate a game set for Marvel Stadium on March 21; that request was denied, with West’s gig at the venue now penciled in for March 12. The report added that West needed to be back in the States by April 3 in order to attend the Grammys in Las Vegas, where is Donda is up for Album of the Year among other nominations.