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Last New Year\u2019s Eve, Brendan Nugent barged into his father\u2019s home, ranting. It was the first time Rodney had seen his son in years.<\/p>\n
Nugent, once known in Wangaratta as a passionate environmentalist and talented high school footballer, was again in the grip of the mental health struggles that had caused him to grow increasingly isolated and erratic.<\/p>\n
No one visited his overgrown house outside town any more. His family hired a mediator to handle his needs, but by October this year, Nugent had fired them.<\/p>\n
While Wangaratta is the gateway to the lush, green hills of Victoria\u2019s north-eastern Alpine country, to some experts it\u2019s known as a desert. Health and extremism researchers have been warning of a dangerous vacuum of mental health services out here \u2013 where people often live in makeshift shelters and bungalows, off-grid<\/a>, and unaccounted for, and locals say so-called \u201csovereign citizen\u201d anti-government ideas are brewing.<\/p>\n There are few answers after this week\u2019s alleged attack on popular local MP Helen Haines \u2013 the second major case of violence against public officials in the area in just over a year. Haines has had both her legs amputated and remains in critical condition at Melbourne\u2019s Alfred hospital after a car rammed into her on Monday.<\/p>\n In August 2025, further into those hills, a conspiracy theorist named Dezi Freeman shot dead two police officers<\/a> and injured another when they arrived at his remote home to serve a warrant in a child sex abuse investigation.<\/p>\n Freeman had an appointment with a psychologist booked that day. Instead, he opened fire on police and fled into the wilds of Porepunkah, sparking Australia\u2019s biggest manhunt, before he was shot dead seven months later<\/a> and more than 100 kilometres away, near the NSW border.<\/p>\n Haines, a former nurse and health researcher, had long been calling for an urgent injection of healthcare resources for the area, and her voice grew louder after the Freeman shootings and a devastating sweep of bushfires. None came.<\/p>\n Nugent is the man accused of deliberately hitting Haines<\/a> with his four-wheel drive, twice, outside her electorate office in Wangaratta. He had been in and out of local psychiatric facilities. Like Freeman, he\u2019d railed online <\/a>against the system as he struggled to find support, speaking of unemployment, chronic pain and stints of homelessness. And like Freeman, he\u2019d been drawn into a web of conspiracy theories on social media.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It is unclear how deep the similarities go between the two cases, and experts stress that having a mental illness does not mean someone will become violent. It also \u201cshould not be treated as an explanation for extremism\u201d, says Dr Zena Burgess, noting that \u201calienation and exposure to extremist networks\u201d often plays a role.<\/p>\n Josh Roose, an extremism expert who has assessed high-profile cases of sovereign citizens for police, has warned<\/a> that support services in Victoria\u2019s north-east are stretched to breaking point. It\u2019s a statewide problem of under-resourcing,<\/a> but the lack of healthcare and housing options carries particularly \u201cdangerous implications\u201d in country as remote and known for sovereign citizen ideology as the Alpine region, he says.<\/p>\n This masthead spoke to about a dozen experts, some of whom said the region\u2019s mental health services were in a similar state to Victoria\u2019s dilapidated roads. Local GPs say patients often wait six to nine months to see a psychologist once they get a referral \u2013 even after the Freeman case, the pandemic and a royal commission into the state\u2019s mental health system which, in 2021, called for major investment in rural communities.<\/p>\n Those close to Nugent say he started smoking marijuana in his teens, and his mental health began to unravel in his 20s, but they hadn\u2019t noticed any signs of extremism.<\/p>\n Others, including neighbours, have described years of aggression and violence from Nugent, particularly targeted at women. When the Haines attack happened, Wangaratta police were already investigating a report that he had menaced a woman with a claw hammer last month<\/a> following an alleged road rage incident near the town.<\/p>\n Related Article But some who knew him spoke of a quiet and intelligent ecology researcher who was well-liked. All say he changed dramatically in recent years from his days protesting logging in the local forest nearly a decade ago.<\/p>\n Nugent\u2019s lawyer told a local court on Thursday that his client was not on any medication at the time of his arrest but suffered from a rare spinal condition, and also had a concussion. He has been charged with dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentionally causing serious injury, and causing harm to a Commonwealth public official. Nugent was sent for an urgent mental health assessment as he was remanded in custody and did not apply for bail.<\/p>\n Roose says the evidence that has emerged so far paints a picture of an unwell man living increasingly alone and off-grid, being drawn deeper into far-left ideology and conspiracies. This week, the yard at the home that Nugent\u2019s father had bought for him seven years ago was overgrown and littered with beer bottles and plastic plant pots.<\/p>\n Police are now investigating connections between Nugent and Haines, who was close friends with his father and stepmother, and whether the alleged attack was \u201copportunistic\u201d or the result of a particular fixation or monitoring of Haines. They are also probing any potential connection between Nugent and the local sovereign citizen movement to which Freeman belonged<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2019, Nugent was briefly part of the same local anti-logging group as Freeman\u2019s landlord, Rebecca Swift<\/a>, though neither appeared to hold conspiratorial, anti-government views at the time.<\/p>\n Roose says both personal and ideological motives could well be at play, as well as substance abuse issues and illness. \u201cIrrespective of whether or not it was planned, someone like Haines may have just symbolised government, and the system he viewed as corrupt [that he felt had let him down],\u201d Roose says.<\/p>\n Online, Nugent followed and engaged with a number of doomsday, far-left and anarchist accounts. In 2022, he began spouting false pro-Kremlin conspiracy theories, claiming Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine was a secret American operation to hike sanctions on Russia and tip the world closer to \u201cworld war III\u201d. \u201cUkraine exposed as CIA-MI6 beachhead,\u201d Nugent wrote in February 2024, as the war entered its second year. He commented on posts by Australian government ministers accusing them of helping Israel commit genocide in Gaza, though he had earlier praised Haines herself.<\/p>\n While his family had long cut contact with Nugent by the time of the alleged attack, they had continued to pay his bills and petrol, and planned to leave him the house where he lived.<\/p>\n Many locals say they barely knew their reclusive neighbour; some were afraid of him after altercations which began in late 2019, but others thought he seemed nice enough.<\/p>\n Days before the alleged attack, Nugent had his knives sharpened at the local butcher, who remembered him as a \u201cnormal guy\u201d.<\/p>\n Nugent had multiple stays in psychiatric units, including the Kerferd ward operated by Albury and Wodonga Health. A former mental health nurse at the ward says they felt there were many opportunities to \u201ccatch\u201d Nugent as he moved through the system, but services are overwhelmed across the state.<\/p>\n Related Article A senior Melbourne-based psychiatrist, who was also not permitted to speak publicly, told this masthead of significant issues in attracting staff to the north-east region, leaving the Kerferd and other surrounding units covered by a string of locum doctors juggling large areas without long-term knowledge of individual patients. The overreliance of fill-in staff was also raised by union members working at Kerferd last year in a survey, alongside concerns about rising workloads and leadership failures.<\/p>\n According to the most recent health data, only 55 per cent of patients presenting to hospital emergency departments for a mental health issue were moved to a specialist bed within eight hours \u2013 well below the state government\u2019s 80 per cent target<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dr Pramudie Gunaratne, who heads the Australian Society of Psychiatrists, says it\u2019s too early to say how big a factor mental health played in the Haines incident, but the case and others \u201cshow what happens when we\u2019re flying blind\u201d.<\/p>\n Two years ago, the Westfield Bondi Junction attacks revealed major failings in psychiatric care<\/a> when Joel Cauchi, a man living with schizophrenia who had fallen into homelessness, went on a fatal stabbing spree through the popular Sydney shopping centre.<\/p>\n The psychiatrists\u2019 society will write to federal Health Minister Mark Butler next week with an urgent proposal to fund a national \u201cobservatory\u201d project, tracking mental health service demand and outcomes across the country.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that people fall through the cracks in the system all the time, but it\u2019s a revolving door,\u201d says Gunaratne. \u201cWe\u2019ll have a tragedy and then outrage, and we might even have an inquiry to tell us what we already know, but nothing ever changes. The system is too overwhelmed to even keep waitlists.\u201d<\/p>\n In Wangaratta, director of the Phillipson Street Medical Clinic, Dr Patrick O\u2019Connor, says there are only a few beds for those suffering from serious psychiatric illnesses in the area.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is one mental health service based out of Albury Wodonga, and you can be on the phone for ages, and you just have to keep calling back to get someone on the line. You really have to push your case.\u201d<\/p>\n The horrific police shootings by Freeman in August 2025 have added further strain to services in the region, locals say, with police and their families still recovering.<\/p>\n![\"Brendan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/75a3620aa37d10e2046a95a6f5a7e11318c8f8acc691d4960f108b390eb745f6.jpeg\")
Brendan Nugent and the house where he lived.The Age<\/p>\n![\"Dezi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/57474c0ceee378d56f0a0dfc9fae4bbd4709012fbb5528701b5303f7e670d403.gif\")
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