14/10/2026
The man is anonymised by the Administrative Review Tribunal as JMNR. He arrived in May 1999 on a Global Special Humanitarian visa, aged about 15. That visa was cancelled under section 501 of the Migration Act because of a substantial criminal record. The longest sentence reported is three years and four months for carjacking a 79-year-old man in Adelaide: he pulled the man from the car, dragged him across the pavement, assaulted him and nearly ran him over, then spat at police. He also has convictions for assaults, robberies and drug offences.
He was released from immigration detention in 2023 after the High Court’s NZYQ ruling against indefinite detention, and placed on a Bridging (Removal Pending) visa. Further offending followed. Some charges ended in conviction; others in findings of mental incompetence. In December 2025 he was released under a five-year supervision order. He has diagnoses of chronic schizophrenia, methamphetamine and cannabis use disorder (in remission), PTSD and type 2 diabetes.
An earlier ART decision, by Deputy President K Millar on 17 March 2025, refused to restore the visa. That decision treated community protection as outweighing other factors and assessed the risk of further offending as moderate to high. The Federal Court later sent the case back. Last month Deputy President Peter Britten-Jones ruled the other way.
Britten-Jones accepted psychiatric evidence from Dr Cassie Smith that, if his mental state stayed stable and he got proper support, the risk of reoffending would be low. He then treated NDIS access as part of that protection argument. On a permanent humanitarian visa, JMNR would be eligible for NDIS support on the schizophrenia diagnosis, including a support coordinator and about three to six hours of daily carer support, plus better housing. On the bridging visa he would not. The tribunal’s stated logic was that better treatment and housing would lower the chance of further offending compared with leaving him on the bridging visa.
• He cannot be removed to South Sudan, because a protection finding has been made, and the supervision order also blocked removal to a third country such as Nauru. Restoring the visa was not the only way he stayed in Australia.
• The decision applied Ministerial Direction 110, which the tribunal must follow. Community expectations still weighed against him because of the seriousness of the offending. Britten-Jones said the other factors, including treatment, outweighed that.
