Martin Bryant

As of 2015, Bryant is housed in the maximum-security Risdon Prison near Hobart.

In March 2012, Sydney artist Rodney Pople controversially won the $35,000 Glover Prize for his landscape painting depicting Port Arthur with Bryant in the foreground holding a firearm.

On 25 March 2007, Bryant attempted to end his life by slashing his wrist with a razor blade. On 27 March, he cut his throat with another razor blade and was hospitalised briefly.

On 13 November 2006, Bryant was moved into Hobart's Wilfred Lopes Centre, a secure mental health unit run by the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services. The 35-bed unit for inmates with serious mental illness is staffed with doctors, nurses and other support workers. Inmates are not locked down, and can come and go from their cells. Exterior security at the facility is provided by a three-wall perimeter patrolled by private contract guards.

Bryant has provided conflicting and confused accounts of what led him to kill 35 people at the Port Arthur site on 28 April 1996. It appears that it could be his desire for attention, as he allegedly told a next-door neighbour, "I'll do something that will make everyone remember me". Bryant's defence psychiatrist Paul Mullen, former chief of forensic psychiatry at Monash University, said "He followed Dunblane. His planning started with Dunblane. Before that he was thinking about suicide, but Dunblane and the early portrayal of the killer, Thomas Hamilton, changed everything."

Bryant was judged fit to stand trial, and it was scheduled to begin on 7 November 1996. Bryant initially pleaded not guilty, but was persuaded by his court-appointed lawyer, John Avery, and the prosecution to plead guilty to all charges.

As a response to the spree killing, Australian state and territory governments placed extensive restrictions on all firearms, including semi-automatic centre-fire rifles, repeating shotguns (holding more than 5 shots) and high-capacity rifle magazines. In addition to this, limitations were also put into place on low-capacity repeating shotguns and rim-fire semi-automatic rifles. Though this resulted in stirring controversy, opposition to the new laws was overcome by media reporting of the massacre and mounting public opinion in the wake of the shootings (see Gun laws in Australia for more information on the 1996 legislation).

In late 1995, he became suicidal after deciding he had "had enough". He stated, "I just felt more people were against me. When I tried to be friendly toward them, they just walked away". Although he had previously been little more than a social drinker, his alcohol consumption increased and, although he had not consumed any alcohol on that day, had especially escalated in the six months prior to the massacre. Bryant's average daily consumption was estimated at half a bottle of Sambuca and a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream, supplemented with port wine and other sweet alcoholic drinks. According to Bryant, he thought the plan for Port Arthur may have first occurred to him four to 12 weeks before the event.

Two months later, on 14 August 1993, a visitor looking for Maurice Bryant at the Copping property found a note saying "call the police" pinned to the door and found several thousand dollars in his car. The rates officer at the time found no reason to suspect criminal intent, and sent council members and police to quell the stresses put forward by letters sent to the local council chambers. Police searched the property for Maurice Bryant without success. Divers were called in to search the four dams on the property, and on 16 August, his body was found in the dam closest to the farmhouse with one of Bryant's diving weight belts around his neck. Police described the death as "unnatural", and it was ruled a suicide. Bryant inherited the proceeds of his father's superannuation fund, valued at $250,000.

With both his father and Harvey dead, Bryant became increasingly lonely. From 1993 to late 1995, he visited various overseas countries fourteen times and a summary of his domestic airline travel filled three pages. He hated the destinations he travelled to, as he found that people there avoided him just as they did in Tasmania. He enjoyed the flights, as he could speak to the people sitting adjacent to him who had no choice but to be polite. Bryant later took great joy in describing some of the more successful conversations he had with fellow passengers.

On 20 October 1992, Harvey was killed when her car veered to the wrong side of the road and hit an oncoming car directly. Bryant was inside the vehicle at the time of the accident, and was hospitalised for seven months with severe neck and back injuries. He was briefly investigated by police for the role he played in the accident, as Bryant had a known habit of lunging for the steering wheel, and Harvey had already had three accidents as a result. She often told people that this was the reason she never drove faster than 60 kilometres an hour (37 mph). Bryant was named the sole beneficiary of Harvey's will and came into possession of assets totaling more than $550,000. As Bryant had only the "vaguest notions" of financial matters, his mother subsequently applied for and was granted a guardianship order, placing Bryant's assets under the management of Public Trustees. The order was based on evidence of Bryant's diminished intellectual capacity.

In 1991, as a result of no longer being allowed to have animals at the house, Harvey and Bryant moved together onto a 29-hectare (72-acre) farm called Taurusville that she had purchased at 2340 Arthur Highway, Copping, a small township. Neighbours recalled that he always carried an air gun and often fired it at tourists as they stopped to buy apples at a stall on the highway, and that late at night he would roam through the surrounding properties firing the gun at dogs when they barked at him. They avoided him "at all costs" despite his attempts to befriend them.

In early 1987, when Bryant was 19, he met 54-year-old Helen Mary Elizabeth Harvey, heiress to a share in the Tattersall's lottery fortune, while looking for new customers for his lawnmowing service. Harvey, who lived with her mother Hilza, befriended Bryant, who became a regular visitor to her neglected mansion at 30 Clare St., New Town and assisted with tasks such as feeding the 14 dogs living inside the house and the 40 cats living inside her garage. In June 1990, someone reported Harvey to the health authorities, and medics found both Harvey and her mother in need of urgent hospital treatment. Hilza Harvey died several weeks later at the age of 79.

Descriptions of Bryant's behaviour as an adolescent show that he continued to be disturbed and outlined the possibility of an intellectual disability. When leaving school in 1983, Bryant was assessed for a disability pension by a psychiatrist who wrote: "Cannot read or write. Does a bit of gardening and watches TV ... Only his parents' efforts prevent further deterioration. Could be schizophrenic and parents face a bleak future with him." Bryant received a disability pension, though he also worked as a handyman and gardener. In an examination after the massacre, forensic psychiatrist Ian Joblin found Bryant to be borderline mentally disabled, with an I.Q. of 66, equivalent to an 11-year-old.

Other cases that locals can recall include that he had pulled the snorkel from another boy while diving and had once cut down trees on a neighbour's property. He was described by teachers as being distant from reality and unemotional. At school he was a disruptive and sometimes violent child who suffered severe bullying by other children. After he was suspended from New Town Primary School in 1977, psychological assessments of Bryant noted his torturing of animals. He returned to school the following year with improved behaviour; however, he persisted in teasing younger children. He was transferred to a special education unit at New Town High School in 1980, where he deteriorated both academically and in behaviour throughout his remaining school years.

Martin John Bryant (born 7 May 1967) is a convicted Australian mass shooter who murdered 35 people and injured 23 others in the Port Arthur massacre, one of the world's deadliest shooting sprees, in Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia, between 28 and 29 April 1996. He is concurrently serving 35 life sentences, plus 1,035 years, all without the possibility of parole, in Hobart's Risdon Prison.

Martin Bryant was born on 7 May 1967 at the Queen Alexandria Hospital in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. He was the first son of Maurice and Carleen Bryant. Although the family home was 65 Augusta Road, Lenah Valley, Tasmania, Bryant spent some of his childhood at their beach home in Carnarvon Bay, Tasmania. In a 2011 interview, his mother recalled that while Bryant was very young, she would often find his toys broken, and said he was an "annoying" and "different" child. A psychologist's view was that Bryant would never hold down a job, as he would aggravate people to such an extent that he would always be in trouble.