‘Terrifying’ Aust crim sent to NZ

A man with more than 200 criminal convictions is being deported to New Zealand, despite not having lived here since he was a toddler.

Jacob Symonds, who is in his 30s, moved to Australia with his adoptive parents when he was a 1-year-old but never got citizenship.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia has ruled to cancel his visa on character grounds as he was deemed an ‘‘unacceptable’’ risk to the Australian community.

The tribunal also said Symonds’ brain was damaged because of drug and alcohol abuse.

The ruling comes shortly after another man was deported from Australia to New Zealand, despite having no connection to New Zealand beyond citizenship.

Alex Viane, 40, was born in American Samoa and became a New Zealand citizen as a child, but never set foot in the country.

His Australian visa was also cancelled on character grounds.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said last month that Australia should only be deporting New Zealand-born criminals who had genuine links to New Zealand.

She said those who had strong roots here were less likely to offend than those who did not have an established support network.

Tribunal documents, released this month, said Symonds’ adoptive parents and biological mother lived in Australia and he had no relationship with his biological father.

He had not visited New Zealand since he was a child in 1999.

Symonds’ criminal record began in Melbourne in 2005 with drug possession and trafficking offences.

Over the next 12 years, he was convicted of a raft of offences, including robbery, intentional destruction of property, assault, stealing a car, possessing a weapon, and Class A drug charges. He served more than three years in jail.

Symonds described his life at various hearings, and those descriptions were recorded in the tribunal documents.

He said he had been fired from a job at McDonalds for ‘‘partying too much’’, sold Ecstasy tablets to get by, and struggled with homelessness.

At one stage in 2016, he was ‘‘trying to write myself off with heroin’’, and said his offending was ‘‘terrifying’’.

Senior tribunal member Egon Fice said he had taken Symonds’ lack of ties to New Zealand into account before upholding the cancellation of his visa, but noted an abusive childhood made his support network in Australia ‘‘tenuous at best’’.

He said he gave more weight to the danger Symonds posed to Australian society due to his high likelihood of reoffending.

‘‘I have found that the harm that would be caused if his conduct were repeated to be so serious that the risk of it being repeated is unacceptable,’’ he said.

‘‘The level of violence and harm to victims discloses a disturbing escalation of seriousness.’’