An article published by Guardian Australia journalist Luca Ittimani on 24 May 2026, regarding the cancellation of the Candace Owens Australian tour, contains factual errors and deliberate omissions that have created a deeply misleading picture of Turning Point Australia’s role and standing in this matter. We are setting the record straight.
The Candace Owens Tour Was Not a Turning Point Australia Event
The Candace Owens tour was organised and promoted by Rocksman Pty Ltd, a company operated by its sole director and shareholder, George Zacharia. It was not a Turning Point Australia event. Turning Point Australia’s involvement was limited to acting as a sponsor through Joel Jammal, and assisting with promotion.
The financial obligations to ticketholders, the management of ticket sales, and all refund responsibilities rest with Rocksman and are properly the subject of the ongoing liquidation process.
What The Guardian Did Not Report
The Guardian’s coverage fails to include several facts that are directly relevant to understanding what actually happened, and who the real victims are.
Candace Owens is owed $300,000 by Rocksman
Turning Point Australia has been in contact with Candace’s touring team regarding the matter. Her spokesperson has confirmed that Rocksman promised to cover the legal costs of challenging the visa refusal at the High Court, and that Candace’s team ultimately paid a significant amount in legal bills. In good faith, Candace also refunded a significant number of ticket holders out of her own pocket when it became clear that Rocksman’s assurances were not being honoured.
Joel Jammal is owed a significant sum by Rocksman
National Director of Turning Point Australia, Joel Jammal, is owed approximately $300,000 by Rocksman; this is money owed from the previous Donald Trump Jr. tour that did not proceed. When the tour was cancelled due to government visa delays, Joel personally refunded ticketholders out of his own pocket, in good faith, to ensure they were not left out of pocket. Joel has not bothered registering as a creditor, nor has Candace Owens, because both parties felt there was no point, especially when the Australian Tax Office was owed money.
Western Australia ticketholders were fully refunded
All tickets sold through Ticketek for the Western Australia Candace Owens show were refunded, and this was confirmed directly by Ticketek’s General Manager when Joel Jammal made enquiries late last year. Ticketbooth purchases, which went straight to Rocksman via Stripe, are a separate matter for the liquidation process. Ticketbooth do not hold funds.
Both Joel Jammal and Candace Owens personally have refunded ticketholders. Refunding people are not the actions of people who “ripped off” ticket holders as The Guardian Australia has attempted to portray. These are the actions of victims of a company that collapsed owing money to almost everyone connected to it – the actions of people with integrity who wanted to make things right by ticketholders when Rocksman could not.
The Guardian’s Maths Don’t Add Up
The figures cited in The Guardian’s own article do not withstand basic scrutiny. The article states that 15,000 ticket holders are expected to receive no refunds, while also reporting that tickets started at $95 and that the liquidator identified total debts of more than $760,000 owed to all creditors – including employees, the ATO, sponsors, and ticket holders combined.
Subtracting the non-ticketholder debts reported elsewhere (approximately $410,000 to employees, the ATO, and sponsorship creditors), that leaves roughly $350,000 attributable to ticket holders – equating to approximately $23 per ticket. Yet the cheapest ticket sold for $95. The numbers, as reported, do not reconcile. Either a significant number of ticket holders were already refunded – directly contradicting the article’s own headline – or the financial figures the journalist relied upon are inaccurate and incomplete. A publication of The Guardian Australia’s standing has an obligation to verify basic arithmetic before going to print. It did not.
The Root Cause: Government Visa Denial
There is a critical dimension to this story that The Guardian Australia has chosen not to address.
The Candace Owens tour did not fail because of the conduct of tour organisers. It failed because Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke personally refused Candace Owens a visa in October 2024, invoking the Migration Act’s character test and stating publicly that her presence in Australia was not in the national interest. The High Court upheld that decision. The government’s visa ban was the direct cause of the tour’s collapse and the reason ticketholders are now pursuing refunds through a liquidation process.
This same government created delays that impacted the Donald Trump Jr. tour as well – with multiple media outlets reporting at the time that visa uncertainty under the Albanese government was the direct cause of repeated postponements.
In the same period that Candace Owens was being denied entry to Australia, progressive Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz completed a national speaking tour of Australia without any visa complications. Australians deserve to ask why conservative international speakers face a pattern of visa scrutiny, delays, and outright bans that progressive speakers do not.
Minister Burke told the Australian public he preferred Candace Owens stay “somewhere else.” That is a government minister using administrative power to determine which political voices Australians are permitted to hear in person. That is a free speech issue and a civil liberties issue – and it is the root cause of the financial harm that ticketholders have experienced.
Turning Point Australia’s Record on Refunds
Joel Jammal and Turning Point Australia have been a promoter of two tours: the Nigel Farage tour in 2022, which proceeded successfully, and the Donald Trump Jr. tour in 2023, which was cancelled due to visa delays imposed by the Australian Government.
All refund requests from the Trump Jr. tour have been honoured – every one. Sydney ticketholders were refunded automatically through Ticketek. Melbourne and Gold Coast ticketholders were refunded directly by Joel Jammal. Where ticketholder contact details were withheld by the ticketing platform – a direct consequence of Stripe freezing the account – Joel Jammal and Turning Point Australia publicly broadcast across all social media channels asking affected customers to contact them directly. Every person who came forward was refunded.
Joel Jammal refunded close to $300,000 in tickets in good faith during this period and remains a creditor of Rocksman as a result of those actions.
Victims of Cancel Culture
Joel Jammal is a victim of Rocksman’s collapse. Candace Owens herself is in the same position. The people responsible for Rocksman’s financial management are Rocksman’s own director and officeholder, and that is what the liquidation process exists to examine.
The Guardian’s framing uses Rocksman’s collapse to cast a shadow over Joel Jammal and Turning Point Australia while omitting the facts that tell the real story: that Joel Jammal personally covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds to protect ticket holders, that Candace Owens did the same, that Ticketek refunded Western Australian ticket holders in full, and that none of this would have been necessary had the Australian Labor Government not used its visa powers to ban a conservative speaker from entering the country.
We will continue to stand up for free speech, for conservative voices, and for the rights of Australians to hear perspectives their government does not approve of.
If you believe in the fight for free speech and want to ensure voices like these are never silenced again, we need your support. Join our mailing list to stay informed, or make a donation to help Turning Point Australia continue this fight. Every contribution allows us to push back against government overreach and keep conservative voices alive in this country.
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