Thousands of ticket holders for Candace Owens’ cancelled Australian tour face losing their money after the event’s promoter collapsed with just 21 cents in its bank account — as the American commentator herself claims she was left hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket after being repeatedly denied an Australian visa.
Owens was originally due to tour Australia in November 2024 but was refused entry after the government determined she had the “capacity to incite discord.” A second attempt in March 2025 met the same fate, and a subsequent High Court challenge was dismissed in October 2025. With the tour dead, thousands of ticket buyers were left waiting for refunds that, it has now emerged, will never come.
A report filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on 3 March revealed the full scale of the collapse. Tour promoter Rocksman, whose sole director and shareholder is George Zacharia, folded with virtually no funds remaining. Liquidator David Sampson found the company had no insurance covering the event’s cancellation and had already spent the money raised through ticket sales. The Guardian reported that preliminary investigations suggest Rocksman may have continued to trade while insolvent, with the company found to owe more than $760,000 — including to ticket holders and employees. The liquidator also identified $385,000 of transactions that could constitute “unreasonable director-related transactions in favour of a director, a close associate of the director or to a person on behalf of either.” Investigations are continuing.
Owens herself claims she was left significantly out of pocket after being misled by Rocksman over the costs of her High Court challenge. “Candace’s team ended up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills, as well as providing numerous loans to Rocksman to make refunds before it became apparent that their assurances were meaningless,” her spokesperson said. The team said they only discovered Rocksman had gone into liquidation after seeing media reports in January. “Right up until the last day, they were still promising us that refunds were just around the corner,” the spokesperson added.
Joel Jammal, head of Turning Point Australia — an arm of the late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s US organisation and a major sponsor of the tour — said approximately 15,000 tickets had been sold, priced between $95 and $1,500 for VIP packages. Jammal had previously told ticket holders they would be refunded following the High Court verdict, though he later said he had not been aware of Rocksman’s financial difficulties at the time.
The tour’s main sponsor, bullion dealer As Good As Gold, also claims to be owed $80,000. Co-director Jarrad Panes said Rocksman had promised to return the sponsorship money after the cancellation. “It’s like, what have you done with all of this money?” he said.
Also involved in organising the tour was Damien Costas, the former publisher of Penthouse Australia, who had previously worked on Australian tours for right-wing figures Milo Yiannopoulos and Nigel Farage and helped Jammal establish Turning Point Australia. Neither Costas nor Jammal hold any business responsibility for Rocksman. Zacharia had donated to Turning Point Australia’s 2023 New South Wales election campaign, though Jammal said this was unrelated to the events surrounding the Owens tour.
