Andrew Giles cancels New Zealand menace Glenn Taylor’s visa in ‘national interest’

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has cancelled the visa of New Zealand-born menace who terrorised his family and neighbours, but was saved from deportation by Direction 99.

Glenn Taylor’s visa has been cancelled after a review by the Immigration Minister.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has cancelled the visa of a New Zealand-born menace who terrorised his family and neighbours, but was saved from deportation by Direction 99 despite racking up 35 convictions.

New Zealand citizen Glenn Taylor had been spared from deportation in February by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal after a 2023 conviction and 14-month custodial sentence for a raft of harassment and intimidation offences, all against female victims.

The AAT decision had given weight to his ties to Australia, and an existing brain injury, even though he was an “unacceptable” risk to community safety and would likely reoffend.

It is those latter two factors, The Australian understands, that may have forced the minister’s hand and led to him cancelling Taylor’s visa, taken in the national interest.

Given the minister’s decision, Taylor will now be remanded at an immigration detention centre before being deported to New Zealand, although does have an avenue to appeal at the Federal Court.

The Australian revealed in June how one victim, single mother Jesica Mills, whose family had been terrorised by Taylor when he lived next door to their Central Coast home, had laid the blame “100 per cent” with the Albanese government for letting him stay in the country.

“What we went through was traumatic … No family should have to go through what we went through,” Ms Mills told The Australian.

Mr Giles thereafter confirmed he’d review the AAT’s decision to revoke the mandatory cancellation of Taylor’s visa under Direction 99, and has now cancelled his visa.

Victim Jesica Mills described ‘living on eggshells’ after Taylor’s harassment. Picture: Liam Mendes

Much-maligned Direction 99 had allowed convicted sex and violent offenders to stay by forcing the AAT to place “primary consideration” on a criminal’s ties to Australia in their decision making.

A series of reports in The Australian revealing the extent of the issue forced the minister to issue Direction 110 in June, which usurped its predecessor by putting community safety as the “highest priority”.

Ms Mills described the months of “living on eggshells” during Taylor’s harassment.

“You want to hope (he) wouldn’t be violent towards a child or do anything like that, but he expressed violence towards me – it was continuous threats,” she said, adding that she remained fearful of Taylor.

Taylor, who arrived in Australia in 1978 aged four, has been offending since 1993 and has a history of domestic violence against former partners stretching back years.

The 2023 conviction is what triggered the mandatory revocation of his visa when a Gosford Local Court magistrate handed Taylor a 14-month sentence for a total of eight convictions.

These included two counts of stalking and harassment, two counts of assaulting police officers, destroying property, contravening two apprehended violence orders, and threatening someone.

On one night in October 2022, he bombarded a former partner with messages including “I will kill you” and “People like you should be shot dead”, according to court documents.

In a November 2022 ­incident, Taylor was walking around the unit complex “banging on doors and yelling at neighbours”, who later warned another neighbour that if Ms Mills didn’t abandon the AVO she had taken out against him, “more shit would happen (to her)”.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles. Picture: Martin Ollman

Taylor’s serious offending began in 1999 when he was convicted of assault occasioning ­bodily harm and assaulting a police officer; in 2003 he was sentenced to 200 hours of community service for common assault. In 2007, he contravened an AVO and was also sentenced to six-months imprisonment for assault.

Between 2017 and 2021, he was convicted of assaulting another police officer, stalking and intimidating, assault occasioning bodily harm, and damaging property.

He has thrown ashtrays at victims, threatened to use someone’s face “as a dartboard”, attacked a neighbour with a knife before throwing a rock through their window, and told police officers that they were “f..king dead”.

The AAT had given “weight” to his ties to Australia, given he had a family “support network”, lived here on and off since 1978, and had three children, but from whom he is estranged.

Taylor has a brain injury, sustained in 1997, which the AAT said was a “mitigating factor” and a “significant impediment” to resettling in New Zealand, and he suffered from alcohol and drug issues.

The Australian previously reported that criminal non-citizens who had their visa cancellations revoked by the AAT but then cancelled by the Immigration Minister would have an avenue to appeal that decision in the Federal Court.

However, their cases would need to be argued on more narrow grounds by contending that there had been an error of law in Mr Giles’s decision to cancel their visa.