Woman fined for boozy ruckus on flight

A MELBOURNE woman who was fined $1000 for offences on a Qantas flight said she was served 20 glasses of champagne and other alcohol after take-off.

Bronwyn Streader had drunk the champagne, two glasses of red wine and a gin and tonic while on medication, her lawyer told Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday.

Alex Lewenberg said Streader, 30, was a human rights and refugee activist in Japan, with a doctorate in Japanese culture.

"When I fly Qantas economy I'm lucky to get three glasses of orange juice," Mr Lewenberg said, "but if you're blonde and good-looking you get 20 glasses of champagne."

Streader pleaded guilty to charges of interfering with a crew member, smoking and not wearing a seatbelt during landing. The court heard she had boarded a Sydney-bound flight in Tokyo on March 28 and was seen drinking various types of alcohol.

The prosecution said Streader was served about five alcoholic drinks in a five-hour period. About halfway through the flight she was told to stop smoking, but she lit another cigarette before her packet was confiscated.

When a flight attendant later found evidence she had smoked in a toilet, the captain sent his co-pilot to deliver Streader a formal warning.

"Krieger [the co-pilot] attempted to give [her] the warning but [she] refused to listen and instead reached out and grabbed a pen from the left pocket of Krieger's shirt," said the prosecution's summary tendered in court. "I'm going to sue you. I'm going to take all your names," she had said, and when Krieger reappeared she grabbed his identification on his shirt.

During the aircraft's descent, Streader left her seat, refused to return to it and stood in the galley during landing, after which she was arrested.

Mr Lewenberg said his client had been seriously assaulted in Tokyo, and on the flight she had been affected by a combination of alcohol and medication.

In his sentencing remarks, the magistrate, Lance Martin, said Streader had been bitterly disappointed with the Japanese authorities' response to her assault. Mr Martin said although misbehaviour on aircraft could put lives at risk, he accepted that Streader, who flew from Japan for yesterday's hearing, was traumatised and had acted out of character.

She was put on a 12-month bond, without a conviction, and ordered to pay $600 to the court fund and $400 in costs.

Stress and debt make Sydney a violent city

SYDNEY is an angry city with longer working hours, climbing levels of debt and traffic snarls.

People are trying to cope with increasing stress that leads to alcohol-fuelled violence and a less tolerant society, a sociologist has warned.

James Arvanitakis, from the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney, said Sydneysiders were increasingly feeling the pressures of a competitive society, getting more and more frustrated with everyday annoyances such as public transport delays and feeling increasingly time poor.

"Even though there's quite a lot of wealth, people feel like there's this feeling of competitiveness and that's both on a professional and personal level," Dr Arvanitakis said.

"It's an angry city. It's a combination of the number of work hours and increasing levels of debt and people are feeling the ongoing pressure to buy more and more consumer goods."

Tony Grabs, the director of trauma at St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst, said the number of people admitted to the hospital with injuries from alcohol- and drug-related violence had risen dramatically.

From October 2003 to September 2004, 120 patients were admitted to St Vincent's following an assault or stabbing, Dr Grabs said.

Of those, 54 had been alcohol- or drug-related attacks.

But from October 2006 to September last year, the number of admissions was 197 and those related to alcohol or drugs had nearly doubled to 90.

Dr Grabs believes the latter figures could be even higher. They did not take into account patients who presented to the hospital but were not admitted.

"Over three years, that's a dramatic increase," Dr Grabs said.

Dr Grabs said many city office workers and professionals used alcohol as a way to release work stress but said they were drinking at more harmful levels than they used to.

"It's a fast life," he said of Sydney. "With a fast life there is a perception that they need to unwind.

"Unfortunately, they're unwinding with alcohol."

Dr Grabs said a relatively strong local economy with good employment levels was keeping the violence from getting out of control but he feared what would happen should a recession hit, combined with interest rate increases.

He also said Sydney's cultural mix could sometimes fuel some of the assaults and stabbings.

Figures from the Bureau of Crime Statistics show a rise in assaults - both domestic-violence related and non-domestic related - over the past 10 years, and police agree alcohol-related violence is a problem.

Man jailed for killing twins' sons

A SYDNEY man has been jailed for at least 24½ years for killing the infant sons of twin sisters with whom he had separate relationships.

In the NSW Supreme Court yesterday, Justice Peter Hall said the otherwise non-violent man had not revealed how the deaths occurred or his motivation.

The judge also noted the deaths had "left an unimaginable trail of grief and tragedy".

The 41-year-old printer, who can only be referred to as RHB for legal reasons, had denied murdering both boys, on January 26, 1993, and February 14, 2004.

In October a jury found him guilty of the alternative charge of manslaughter in relation to the first boy, aged 14 months, and guilty of murdering the second, aged two. Both infants suffered internal traumatic - non-accidental - head injury.

"The medical evidence permits the inference to be drawn that the force involved in occasioning blunt head injury to [the first boy] was a significant force or sufficient to cause rotational head injury or injury caused by impact," Justice Hall said. "The mechanisms of injury were the same or similar to those that caused injury to [the second boy]."

RHB married the mother of the first boy in 1992 and sometime after they broke up in 2001 began a relationship with her twin.

In the first case he had brought her unconscious and "limp" son to her at their home, after he had been alone with the toddler.

The mother of the second boy had been out shopping when RHB rang to say: "Hurry up and get back, your son is unconscious, he's blacked out."

On occasions, she said, RHB told her how much he hated her taking the boy to visit his father, saying "I wish this child was mine so you wouldn't have to go over and see [him]."

Justice Hall said medical evidence at the trial concluded he was not suffering any psychiatric illness, disability, or disturbance.