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Banned, censored, and branded a “political extremist”, US comedian Shayne Smith is turning his surreal clash with Australia’s bureaucracy into a new stand-up special: How to Get Banned from Australia.

Here’s how one comedian aims to turn his bizarre ban from clown-world Australia into comedy gold.

Christian and former reprobate Shayne Smith was red-flagged as a “political extremist”, then denied a visa earlier this year.

The surprise refusal came about, he said, because Joe Biden’s administration had put pro-life Catholics on “terror watch lists”.

Smith recounted the events during a three-hour sit-down with Matt Fradd’s Pints with Aquinas in October.

Providing context, he said Biden’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had passed the nonsense ‘terror threat’ designation onto Tony Burke’s Department of Home Affairs (DHA).

State-Imposed Censorship

“It was a huge mess,” the 39-year-old recalled.

After he applied for an Australian work visa, Labor bureaucrats – who, by the way, just let in ISIS brides – apparently told Smith that they “didn’t like people like him.”

The DHA then allegedly added, “We don’t like the podcast you’re on. We don’t like the merch in your store, and we don’t like what you post.”

Their demands didn’t stop there.

Smith and his lawyers were told that if he wanted to enter Australia, he would have to remove content, such as gun-themed T-shirts, from his website.

According to the comedian, Labor’s DHA then began censoring him on social media.

All the hoops they wanted him to jump through, Smith exclaimed, “were insane.”

The DHA apparently also demanded a “letter apologising for a speeding ticket he picked up on his last visit.”

“It was weird. Australia is a weird place,” he said, adding, “I’m not joking.”

For example, “it took over a year of litigation and Trump’s election to eventually get into the country.”

Even with all that work, “the visa was only approved two weeks before (his) Australian gigs.”

Politically Incorrect

Smith said his lawyers asked the DHA about the “political extremist” label, and it seemed to boil down to answers Smith gave during an interview with African-American conservative Jesse Lee Peterson.

Peterson had asked Smith whether he thought there should be more “white babies”.

To which he answered, “Sure. I want my family to grow. We’re all white.”

“It’s what Peterson’s podcast does. He tries to be controversial,” Smith explained.

Labor’s DHA didn’t like the answer and allegedly said as much, apparently telling him they hated it.

Now fodder for a new comedy special, Smith’s take is that his file landed on a bored leftwing bureaucrat’s desk, who figured to hell with this conservative – “I’m going to make it difficult for him.”

“Everyone working in that government office is probably not a conservative.”

So maybe the whole DHA was in on it, he joked.

“They made me do all this stuff, and it was frustratingly expensive. I had to travel around, get multiple background checks in places I’d been arrested,” Smith explained further.

On top of this, Smith said Burke’s bureaucrats “asked for transcripts of his comedy”.

The DHA, he alleged, said that they wanted to make sure “he wasn’t espousing conservative views publicly in Australia”.

When it came to providing character references, he was told not to use “religious people or priests.”

On the advice of his agent, Smith decided to “play ball”. He wrote the apology for the speeding ticket and got “dirtbag comedians to write character references.”

By this stage, Smith said, concerts had been cancelled, some rescheduled. It was chaotic.

“I was being harassed,” he concluded.

No Way to Protest

There was no avenue for protesting the government overreach, either.

His struggle hasn’t been picked up or reported by the Australian media, because DHA bureaucrats told him to keep quiet.

Smith was firmly warned that any public protests would result in his visa application being rejected.

In the end, Smith decided to persevere. He said he wanted to honour the 75% of Australians who turned up and gave him no grief.

If it were not for ordinary Australians reaching out to him, he would have walked away from the gigs, he explained.

People were asking him to pray with them when he got here, while others told him they looked forward to hearing his routines.

Not one to let a bad experience with serious comedy potential go to waste, Smith is now speaking out.

He’s written “How to Get Banned from Australia.”

The soon-to-be-released comedy special will be a stand-up, stand-alone and run along the lines of his famed “How to Get Banned from Karate“.

One of the few prominent church figures to comment on the government bullying is Lecturer and head of Divinity at Tabor Adelaide, Matthew James Gray.

In a somewhat rare weigh-in on politics, Gray said in a post online that he was appalled by the story.

“Smith is not my cup of tea: I’m not Catholic, I’m Baptist.

“It’s precisely why, as a Baptist, that I take liberty of conscience and expression very, very seriously.

“A government refusing a visa purely because somebody is a Catholic is dangerous,” Gray rightly asserted.

Especially, “for everybody under that government, whatever they believe.”