Joe Rogan takes another swipe at Australia after declaring he would never move here: ‘What a cage Australia is’
Joe Rogan said Australia ‘f***ed up’ by handing in its guns in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre after declaring he would never move Down Under.
Speaking in January with comedian Kurt Metzger, the world’s biggest podcaster criticised John Howard’s 1996 gun buyback scheme, claiming it misled the public.
‘They thought they were doing the right thing… and now their government is just locking them up for anything they want’, Rogan said in a podcast earlier this year.
Metzger added that Australia was a ‘cage’, its citizens were ‘a bunch of punks’ and that he believed, falsely, that the massacre was a ‘government-run mass shooting’.
The sweeping reforms were introduced after the Port Arthur massacre claimed 35 lives and shocked the nation.
The Howard government worked with state and territory leaders to ban a range of weapons and launch a massive buyback scheme, which ultimately saw more than 650,000 firearms surrendered.
A new National Gun Buyback Scheme was announced following the 2025 Bondi massacre, which saw 15 people killed.
From November 2, owners of newly banned firearms will be paid to surrender their weapons under the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2025.
Joe Rogan said Australians ‘f**ked up’ by handing over their weapons in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre
Kurt Metzger called Australia a ‘cage’ before claiming it was an arm of an Arthurian-style shadow government
Rogan has been a vocal critic of Australia in recent years, taking aim at a raft of government policies, including COVID-19 lockdown laws and censorship.
However, some guests have pushed back against his criticism of the Australian government.
Last year, Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe defended Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the podcast, describing the political landscape he faced as a ‘conga line of stupidity’.
Crowe’s remarks came after Rogan bluntly asked, ‘What is wrong with the way Australia is run?’
In response, Crowe praised Albanese as a leader and criticised political opponents and media figures for distracting from his achievements.
‘We’re a little bit lucky at the moment, we have a Prime Minister who is very much motivated by trying to help everybody, which should be the job of a politician right? To improve the lives of the people they represent,’ he said.
‘There’s haters on every corner, but he’s a good man.’
On a previous podcast, Rogan praised Australians and the country itself: ‘it’s a rugged place, and the kind of people that live there, they’re fun.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attends the memorial site for the Bondi shooting victims. The massacre triggered a new gun buyback scheme, which kicks into effect in November
‘They’ve kind of got a super f***** up oppressive government, unfortunately.’
In 2024, Rogan also declared that he would never move Down Under.
The remarks came during a conversation with retired mixed martial arts fighter Royce Gracie as they discussed what they saw as diminishing personal freedoms in the US amid rising crime.
‘I keep telling people if America falls I think the whole world will fall, the rest of the world will fall,’ Gracie said.
‘Yeah, maybe that’s the plan,’ responded Rogan.
‘There’s no place that has this kind of freedom,’ he added.
Gracie then asked: ‘Where would you go?’
Rogan said he had once considered Australia a viable alternative to the US, but had since changed his mind.
‘I used to think Australia but then I saw how they handled the pandemic. I was like, “oh f***, that well that’s what happens when no one has guns”,’ he said.
‘Yep, the army just rolls in and tells you what to do and puts you in concentration camps because you have a cold, like it’s crazy.’
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia required people arriving in the country to quarantine before entering the community.
Most were housed in hotels, while some were placed in temporary isolation facilities.
Rogan repeatedly attacked Australia’s COVID-19 response during the pandemic, accusing the government of imposing heavy-handed restrictions.
‘There’s some crazy shit going on right now where the army is trying to keep people inside in Australia,’ he said in 2021.
‘They have full on government lockdowns where the government is flying helicopters over streets saying “go back indoors, you’re not allowed outside”.
‘Which is crazy – this disease does not even transmit well outside. Being outside and getting vitamin D is probably one of the best things you can do.’
