The board heard 30-year-old Manu Hausia had recently been reclassified as a high-security prisoner after accruing eight misconducts in the last 16 months at the Otago Corrections Facility.
A Corrections officer at the hearing last month described the man as "easily led".
Hausia — a Tongan citizen, on an expired visitor visa — was sentenced to six and a-half years’ imprisonment in April last year after two attacks, the second of which came while he was on bail and banned from contacting the victim.
After meeting the woman at a rugby game in Auckland at the start of 2021, Hausia began living with her in Oamaru.
Within six months, his violent side was on full show.
Hausia confronted the victim when she returned from church and demanded to see her phone, then punched her unconscious.
It was only thanks to her 11-year-old son that police were called.
Hausia was charged and bailed to Ashburton on condition he refrain from contacting the victim and remain north of the Waitaki River.
By August, however, he had returned to Oamaru and the pair resumed their relationship.
On September 2, after a long drinking session, Hausia argued with the victim.
As she called police, he put her in a strangle hold and stabbed her in the head and body more than a dozen times with a kitchen knife and scissors.
He told her that he would be the last person on Earth that she would ever see.
The woman’s screams woke her cousin.
Hausia reacted to the second woman’s intervention by stabbing her in the leg and slashing her across the face.
When she grabbed the children and barricaded them in another room, he fled.
At sentencing the High Court at Timaru heard the first victim’s stab wounds were just millimetres away from being fatal.
Hausia said he had thought "deeply" about the attacks since being locked up.
"Because of the strength of his faith, he believes that he will not be a risk in the future," panel convener Geoffrey Ellis said.
The Parole Board was not convinced.
"Given the seriousness of this offending, the length of Mr Hausia’s sentence ... he is considered still to pose an undue risk."
Hausia’s identified risk factors included: substance use, violence propensity, inability to manage personal relationships, poor problem solving and impulse control, and the board requested a psychological assessment to plan his rehabilitation.
Hausia said he wanted to return home to his family.
He will see the Parole Board again in March; his sentence expires in 2028.
