The Court held that under s 35(3) of the High Risk Serious Offenders Act 2020 (WA), the word 'application' refers to the originating process filed to commence the restriction order proceeding, not the entire court process through to final hearing. The temporal requirement is assessed at the date of filing: there need only be a low-level possibility that the offender might be released from custody within one year of that date. Subsequent changes in the offender's custodial status (such as the imposition of further sentences extending custody beyond the one-year window) do not retrospectively render the application incompetent.
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