How Brendan Nugent went from plant scientist to alleged attacker

Ten years ago, a researcher named Brendan Nugent was slogging through the bush in western Victoria, searching for a critically endangered shrub.

Navigating steep terrain and camping in national parks, he documented the places where he found the Grampians Bitter Pea, according to a local newspaper article.

"He is a terrific scientist and has drawn many people into helping with this research," a park ranger who worked with him told the Ararat Advertiser.

Mr Nugent, who held a masters degree in forest ecosystem science, dedicated more than eight years of his life to that little flower — coordinating citizen science projects, writing in nature newsletters and giving talks to wildlife groups.

People who knew him then described him as a passionate environmentalist who got along well with people.

But over the course of the last few years, he had reportedly cut off his family, become isolated and threatened neighbours.

One said he'd been talking "gobbledegook" and could be heard screaming from his property.

On Monday afternoon, when he was driving along Wangaratta's main street, he allegedly did a U-turn to deliberately target the local MP Helen Haines outside her electorate office as she was getting items from her boot.

Witnesses said the 43-year-old's car rammed her repeatedly.

The politician has had her legs amputated and remains in a critical condition in hospital.

Mr Nugent is now facing charges including intentionally causing serious injury, causing harm to a Commonwealth public official and possessing and cultivating cannabis.

Hours of news coverage since then has tried to answer the question — how did that man searching for delicate flowers in the bush go on to allegedly commit such an act?

A 'pacifist' vegan with a history of mental health struggles

Mr Nugent had struggled with mental health issues from a young age, according to a family member who spoke to the ABC.

He channelled his energy into the environment, his commitment to veganism and greening.

Brendan cut off ties with that family member more than 10 years ago, they said.

He moved into a property in Tarrawingee, a short drive east of Wangaratta.

He has been an avid social media poster, with more than 10,000 posts on the platform X across more than 12 years.

In 2019, they show he was engaging with people across the world about environmental research and current issues, tagging politicians and media in his posts.

In one post, he reflected on the beauty of the sounds of nature in his local area, and invited a fellow poster to come and stay.

But he also expressed disappointment in the Australian government and the mainstream media. 

He also wrote about living with transverse myelitis, which causes spinal inflammation and left him in chronic pain.

In 2022, he complained that he wanted to get off the Disability Support Pension to go back to work. Earlier, he'd posted he was being stymied by Centrelink miscalculating his income.

He seemed agitated about the system.

"I have a masters degree, H1 average, still … [can't] get the basic assistance I need to work. Tried many times. Disability pension not enough to manage it so I'm constantly broke spending on health, NDIS is unavailable. We are left to sit in pain 24/7," his account posted.

The ABC has been told Mr Nugent — who police have charged with growing cannabis — had been consuming the drug for some time.

In 2022, he was charged with breaching an interim personal safety intervention order in Tarrawingee.

A now-deleted post from his X account in 2024, which was unearthed by the ABC NEWS Verify team, appears to show cracks in his mental health.

"Im just at home … Tarrawingee, being peaceful, and it feels like they are going to kill me," his caption reads.

He was seen by mental health teams at the Kerferd Clinic a few years ago, a mental health facility in Wangaratta.

His former teacher Jacquie, who went to his court appearance on Thursday, said she had helped him through that period, so he could "interact with the world again".

"He was quite confused about being in an institution … and needed support and I felt that I could do that," she told reporters.

This week, the property where it seems he became increasingly isolated had dozens of beer and spirits bottles, along with empty vegetable tins and juice bottles outside.

The ABC has confirmed he was connected to community mental health teams, although it is not known how often they had been seeing him.

No promotion of violence found in Brendan Nugent's posts

Independent of Mr Nugent's health issues, he existed within a swirling hothouse of political anger and discontent — both online and in Victoria's High Country, a stronghold of the sovereign citizen movement.

Roughly 50 kilometres down the road from Mr Nugent's home was where self-declared sovereign citizen Dezi Freeman shot dead two police officers in August last year.

While this will form part of police investigations, no evidence has emerged that Mr Nugent himself was espousing violence online or mixing with sovereign citizens.

An ABC analysis of a sample of 1,800 of his tweets has found nothing promoting violence.

Police are gathering evidence — and will have access to much more material — but Mr Nugent's former teacher Jacquie did not believe the man she knew was any kind of extremist.

"He does not threaten violence. He does not speak about terror," she said.

Mr Nugent's public postings on the platform X do show that he held firm political views.

He was against the war in Gaza, highly critical of Israel and was angry with the Australian government's actions.

He took aim at senior Labor MPs Richard Marles, Mark Dreyfus and Penny Wong, as well as commentators at the ABC and the Guardian.

"What a disgusting offical [sic] response to the killing of our citizens by israel" he posted to then-attorney-general Mr Dreyfus, after two Australians were killed in Southern Lebanon in an Israeli airstrike in 2023.

"You don't even call on israel to stop".

He railed against fossil fuels and in his earlier years he tweeted against logging, which was banned in public forests in Victoria in 2024.

The issues he was concerned about were also issues important to Helen Haines, who he allegedly went on to attack.

On her website, Ms Haines states she is "appalled" at the Gaza conflict and has called on the federal government "to do more to put pressure on the Netanyahu Government to end this conflict".

She spoke in support of ending native forest logging in parliament.

In the handful of tweets aimed at her, which seemed to end five years ago, Mr Nugent was pleasant and supportive.

But Josh Roose, who researches political and religious violent extremism at Deakin University, believes his public postings seemed increasingly frantic this year.

"He starts to engage with more conspiratorial material, but also a lot of anti-Zionist material and Israel content, and he is becoming more hardline," Dr Roose said.

After silence for a month, he made three posts on Sunday, the day before he allegedly attacked Haines.

The intersection of 'thin' ideology and poor mental health

Commenting more generally, Dr Roose said increasingly people were driven by "thin ideologies" — fuelled by personal grievances more than strong alignment with a religious or political cause.

He said the 2022 Wieambilla attack in Queensland, in which two police officers were killed, and last year's Porepunkah attack, had things in common with the alleged attack on Ms Haines.

"There are clear similarities, including living, if not off grid, then living in isolation," he said.

"Living in rural poverty. Strongly held beliefs intersecting with mental illness. Raw political emotion.

"It is no coincidence to me that we have had Wieambilla, Porepunkah, and now this, in regional Australia — where there is a significant undercurrent of rural poverty and the stripping of support networks."

Just five days before she was attacked, Ms Haines had lobbied the prime minister for more funding for rural health services.

Mental health experts say violent incidents becoming more common

Former Australian of the Year, psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, said the mental health of Mr Nugent must be considered before any considerations of motive.

"[Mental health] may or may not have been a factor in the tragedy, but it wouldn't be surprising if it was," Professor McGorry said.

He said the mental health system in Victoria was in a worse state than before the 2019 royal commission into the sector.

And while it was very rare for someone with a severe mental health condition to commit violence, he believed it was increasing — a position backed by the union that represents mental health workers.

Earlier this month, a woman was allegedly stabbed in the neck on a tram in Melbourne by a stranger who had schizophrenia.

In August, a 10-year-old child with cancer was punched in the head, and his mother was stabbed with scissors, by a man who told court he was in a "mental state of mind".

In October last year, CCTV captured a woman stabbing another woman as she walked through Melbourne's CBD. A court said she had "complex psychiatric illnesses".

"I wake up every morning half expecting to see another Bondi Junction on the front pages of the paper, " Mr McGorry said, referring to the 2024 attack where six people were killed in a mall by a man who a coroner found was in psychosis.

"Because I know that there are many untreated patients out there, some of whom, a small percentage of whom, when they're not well, can be quite dangerous."