Joe Rogan has accused Australia of “f**king up” by surrendering its guns after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, while reiterating that he would never move to the country.

During a January conversation with comedian Kurt Metzger, the world’s biggest podcaster attacked the gun buyback program introduced under then-Prime Minister John Howard, claiming Australians had been misled about its purpose.

“They thought they were doing the right thing… and now their government is just locking them up for anything they want,” Rogan said on a podcast earlier this year.

Metzger went further, describing Australia as a “cage,” calling its citizens “a bunch of punks” and claiming he believed the massacre was a “government-run mass shooting.”

The sweeping gun reforms followed the Port Arthur massacre, in which 35 people were killed in an attack that shocked the nation.

The Howard government worked alongside state and territory leaders to prohibit a range of weapons and introduce a large-scale buyback scheme. More than 650,000 firearms were ultimately surrendered.

A new National Gun Buyback Scheme was announced after the 2025 Bondi massacre, which left 15 people dead.

Under the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2025, owners of newly prohibited firearms will be paid to hand over their weapons from November 2.

Rogan has repeatedly criticised Australia in recent years, targeting a range of government policies, including COVID-19 lockdown measures and censorship.

Some of his podcast guests, however, have challenged his condemnation of the Australian government.

Last year, Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe defended Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during an appearance on the podcast, describing the political environment surrounding him as a “conga line of stupidity.”

Crowe made the comments after Rogan asked bluntly: “What is wrong with the way Australia is run?”

In reply, Crowe praised Albanese’s leadership and accused political opponents and media figures of distracting attention 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.”

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On an earlier podcast, Rogan offered a more positive assessment of Australia and its people, saying: “It’s a rugged place, and the kind of people that live there, they’re fun.”

He added: “They’ve kind of got a super f***** up oppressive government, unfortunately.”

Rogan also said in 2024 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.’

Labour was accused last night of “destroying school standards” through yet another overhaul of the curriculum.

Education Secretary Lucy Powell was warned that “children will be the losers” after announcing that speaking skills will receive the same status as reading and writing in GCSE assessments.

Ms Powell also indicated that fewer pupils could be sent home for poor behaviour, saying she wanted the education system to reward “inclusion, not exclusion”. Setting out her vision, she vowed to “widen the narrow view of what good is” and said she was leading the “Department of Hope”.

Downing Street said her speech to school leaders in Birmingham was intended to outline a vision to “reimagine childhood in a new era”.

The proposals appear to move in the opposite direction to efforts by previous Conservative governments to strengthen and toughen school standards.

Laura Trott, the Conservatives’ education spokesman, said: “Blowing open the curriculum and assessment review once again creates more confusion for schools and risks reopening the hard-won debate over the importance of a knowledge-rich curriculum.”

She described Ms Powell’s decision to rebrand her department as the “Department of Hope” as “Orwellian”.

Invoking George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ms Trott said: “The Ministry of Peace made war, the Ministry of Love tortured people, and now Lucy Powell has the Department of Hope while school standards are being destroyed.”

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, called the proposals “woolly” and said: “Hope won’t get pupils through exams.”

Speaking at the Confederation of School Trusts, Ms Powell said that “speaking, listening and communicating” would become a “core part” of teaching and assessment from primary school through GCSE and beyond. Speaking and listening exams were removed from the marks counting towards English GCSE final grades in 2013 after concerns that teachers were inflating results.

Baroness Spielman, a former head of Ofsted who is now a Conservative life peer and shadow work and pensions minister, said the announcement appeared to signal that Ms Powell could reopen methods once used by schools to boost GCSE grades and make their performance appear stronger than it was.

She added: “It is children who will be the losers.”

Other Conservative sources said they feared the push to introduce speaking skills could displace more rigorous academic content in state schools, while private schools continued to demand more from their pupils.

Ms Powell argued that “oracy” was increasingly important in the age of artificial intelligence and said pupils in state schools were often denied the opportunity to develop those skills.

“The ability to articulate yourself confidently is central to success in work and in life, but for too long it’s been a marker of privilege,” she said. “Now it will become the right of every child – nobody left out because they can’t speak up. That’s why we’re hardwiring oracy into the revised national curriculum.”

She added: “I can announce today that I will give oracy equal status to reading and writing, as a new strand of the English curriculum.” Labour will work with schools and exams regulator Ofqual to ensure that “oracy will light up every classroom”, she said.

Ms Powell also indicated that she wanted to reduce exclusions, calling for a system that “rewards inclusion, not exclusion”. She said: “Poor behaviour must have strong consequences, but once someone falls out of the system, it’s all that much harder to get them back.”

She also wants to reduce the amount of academic writing required in subjects including music, PE and drama, with more practical forms of assessment introduced instead. Summing up her approach, she said: “We need to widen the narrow view of what good is. And we need to give our young people something to believe in again. Hope for the future. That is my mission – I’ve dubbed it as me leading the Department of Hope.”

But when the Daily Mail asked for details as to how all of this would be implemented, no answers were forthcoming.

Chris McGovern, of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘Oracy is vital but should be a side product of all good teaching.

‘Separating it out will be a green light for lazy teaching.’

Saturday Night Live star Michael Che was put in an uncomfortable position when he was asked about Shane Gillis’ controversial monologue from the previous weekend.

During his latest stint as guest host of the NBC sketch series, Gillis, 38, delivered a joke claiming that women at gyms now “just dress like w****s.”

As the joke triggered a fierce backlash online, Che, 43, took to Instagram to say he still needed to promote his upcoming stand-up special. “wonder what every f***ing questions gonna be about. thanks a lot shane,” he wrote.

That social media post was raised by anchor Laura Jarrett during an interview with Che on Thursday morning’s Today show. 

“Oh, no,” Che groaned before addressing the reaction to Gillis’ routine. “That’s comedy. You think it’s funny and then some people don’t.”

Asked whether he had laughed at Gillis’ performance, Che sidestepped the question. He said he had been “at cue cards, actually, thinking about what I was gonna say that was gonna make people upset,” adding that he did not watch the monologue until the following day. 

When Jarrett asked what he thought after eventually hearing the joke, Che paused for a long moment before responding that he “didn’t think about it honestly.”

Jarrett noted that the show’s writers get to see the opening monologue in advance, but Che again declined to offer a clear opinion.

“If you’re not working,” said the Manhattan-born comedian. He explained that there is so much happening backstage that it can be difficult to follow what everyone else is doing, particularly for him. “I’m not what they call ‘good at my job,’ so I don’t pay attention to all that.” 

Later in the interview, Che added: “I can’t criticize anybody for swinging and missing ’cause I’ve definitely swung and missed too. I try to keep that heat off of it.” 

The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Che and Gillis for comment. 

Gillis’ latest Saturday Night Live appearance drew the largest live audience of his three hosting appearances. Nielsen figures licensed by Late Nighter show that an average of 4.4 million people watched the episode.

In the monologue, Gillis poked fun at himself for “going to the public gym as a fat guy” while surrounded by “the hottest gay guys you’ve ever seen.” He then said: “Also, I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like w****s now.”

Smiling, he continued: “Look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe – have you seen it? I’ve seen it. The shorts? Have you seen the shorts?”

Gillis drew laughs as he described the workout clothes as “neon” and “artificial bait-colored,” claiming the material had wrinkles that “go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole.”

He added: “And don’t look. You’re not allowed to look. For real, don’t look, because they are filming. I’m in the background of like 10 TikToks right now.”

As criticism of the monologue spread across social media, Schitt’s Creek star Dan Levy vocally denounced Gillis in an Instagram video. 

‘Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them w****s. It makes the men calling them w****s misogynists. There’s a difference there,’ said Levy.

‘By the way, I’ve seen more men’s nipples at the gym than I’ve ever seen women showing their bodies off,’ observed the son of SCTV icon Eugene Levy. 

‘But I’m speechless that something like that can exist on live national television. And to be perfectly honest, more men need to be standing up in opposition to this, because it’s complacency that has created the environment with which women are sexually assaulted and it’s a “conversation” as opposed to a crime.’

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NFL star Travis Kelce was then drawn into the scandal when he liked the video of Gillis’ monologue on Saturday Night Live’s official Instagram page.

He quickly drew howls of condemnation on X, where one user branded him ‘a d*****bag frat bro’ and another called him a ‘disgusting man.’ 

Even his new wife Taylor Swift was unable to avoid the blowback entirely, with one observer demanding on Reddit: ‘Taylor, is this your king?? Come get your man girl.’

Swift and Kelce exchanged vows at a 1,000-guest ceremony at Madison Square Garden officiated by Adam Sandler, whose 2025 movie Happy Gilmore 2 had featured a shirtless cameo by the football heartthrob. 

This June, Gillis was a celebrity guest at Kelce’s annual Tight End University training camp, as seen in a video for the sports comedy page JokeWRLD. 

Kelce was shown greeting Gillis with a warm hug, after voiceover narration referred to the comedian and the football player as ‘friends.’

Gillis also proudly introduced Kelce to his father Phil, who shook the Kansas City Chiefs player’s hand and said: ‘It’s an honor to meet you.’ 

Saturday Night Live alumna Ego Nwodim, who was a cast member on the show for seven seasons from 2018 to 2025, retorted to Gillis with jokes of her own.

She fired up her Insta Stories and posted a mirror selfie at the gym with one arm raised, accompanied by the caption: ‘w**** reporting for duty.’ 

Her follow-up was a picture of what appeared to be a pulled pork eggs benedict, captioned: ‘getting my 30 grams of protein in after heuxing.’ 

Gillis made headlines in 2019 when he was hired to join the cast of Saturday Night Live, only to be fired over resurfaced podcast clips of his politically incorrect comic bits, including one in which he used the ethnic slur ‘ch**k.’ 

Inasmuch as Gillis was hired at the same time as Bowen Yang, the first Saturday Night Live cast member of Asian descent, the jokes pulled even further focus.

Gillis issued a statement noting he is a ‘comedian who pushes boundaries,’ while offering ‘to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.’

He was defended by legendary Saturday Night Live veteran Norm Macdonald, who himself had been fired from the show over his OJ Simpson material.

In 1997, an NBC executive who was friends with Simpson jettisoned Macdonald for repeatedly making fun of the ex-football player over his double murder trial. 

Macdonald tweeted his sympathies to Gillis, writing that the younger comic’s firing was ‘Unacceptable’ and telling him: ‘Please DM me, pal, when you have a moment.’ 

In the ensuing years, Gillis rose back to showbiz success, and by 2023 he released a stand-up special that made the Netflix Top 10 in five countries. 

Nwodim left Saturday Night Live last year after the 50th season, amid a cast exodus that included Heidi Gardner, Devon Walker, Michael Longfellow and Emil Wakim.

Yang sensationally quit the long-running series in the middle of the 51st season, while Chloe Fineman left after that season concluded.