The government must also now consider Dr Qinglin Wang for the next hospital internship intake based on his merits, or risk paying him more compensation.

The orders mark a conclusion to Dr Wang's David and Goliath battle with the ACT government, which fought the discrimination claims over two years.

Dr Wang migrated to Australia in 2001 with 16 years' experience, a master's degree in neurology, and time as the director of the neurology department at the Tianjin Medical University in north-east China.

In 2007, he became an Australian citizen. But after he had spent years completing bridging courses and exams, the government denied him an internship at the Canberra Hospital, without which he could not practise medicine in Australia.

Dr Wang, aged in his 50s, found himself working as a low-paid aged care nurse, and fighting a big legal battle over the government's intern ranking system.

From 2014, a new government policy ranked intern applicants according to the location of their university, with ANU students given first preference and international graduates automatically ranked last.

It was a radical change from the previous merits-based internship policy. But it is common in various forms in other Australian states and territories after inter-government agreements were made to address the fact that the number of graduates were exceeding the number of internships available.

Once denied an internship, Dr Wang complained of discrimination based on both age and race to the ACT Human Rights Commissioner. But the commission couldn't resolve the dispute and referred it to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

In an interim decision published in January last year, the tribunal found the government had committed direct discrimination against Dr Wang.

The government unsuccessfully attempted an appeal against senior member Allan Anforth's interim decision. It then tried unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court to have Mr Anforth thrown off the case for bias.

The interim decision was set aside, and Dr Wang has now successfully argued that the policy discriminated against him either directly and indirectly.

In his decision, Mr Anforth said the tribunal was uncomfortable with how the government had sought to blame Dr Wang for not taking the exams earlier.

In a decision published by the tribunal on Thursday, the government was ordered to consider Dr Wang "on his merits" for the next hospital internship intake.

"The consideration of the applicant's merits should be free of any assumptions to the effect that all ANU graduates would be superior candidates to the applicant on their merits just by reason of the fact that they are recent ANU graduates," Mr Anforth said.

The tribunal ordered the ACT government to pay Dr Wang $40,000 in compensation,"for the anxiety, embarrassment and humiliation he has suffered by reason of the respondent's discriminatory conduct."

The tribunal also foreshadowed further compensation if he was not "fairly considered on his merits for the next intake", at which point he would also be entitled to compensation for the economic losses sustained from the discriminatory policy.