KEY POINTS:
James Macready-Bryan, 21, is fed through a tube now, cared for day and night after suffering catastrophic brain damage during a fight in Melbourne 18 months ago.
Shannon McCormack was killed when he tried to break up a late-night fight between brawling youths in the same city, lingering five days after he was king-hit from behind.
Every second Australian now fears a similar fate, according to a poll by Roy Morgan Research for a new coalition launched yesterday to combat alcohol-related violence in a nation in which binge drinking has become an epidemic.
Almost one in five had suffered alcohol-related violence, or had a friend or relative who had, the poll found.
The poll for the new National Alliance Against Alcohol Related Violence supports a series of earlier studies that have so alarmed authorities that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last month pledged A$53.5 million ($63.2 million) to a national campaign against binge drinking.
As Canberra gears up for Rudd's 2020 conference this weekend - convened to identify national priorities and suggest policies to meet them - the alliance is calling for even stronger action from federal and state governments.
Daryl Smeaton, chief executive of the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation, told the launch of the alliance that the alcohol taxation system needed to be reformed.
Smeaton's foundation is one of more than 20 organisations that have joined the new alliance, with such other bodies as the Salvation Army, the Mental Health Council of Australia, and the National Council on Drugs.
The Morgan research commissioned by the alliance showed that 14.5 million Australians believed there was a direct link between binge drinking and rising violence, and that more than 10 million were worried about violence during visits to pubs, clubs or entertainment districts after dark.
Rudd's strategy follows alarming studies by a range of agencies that have shown a doubling in the number of cases of alcohol-related liver disease at Australian hospitals over the past four years, and an annual A$15 billion slug to the economy from absenteeism, accidents, and health care.
A national survey of secondary schools in 2005 found that in any given week about one in 10 12- to 17-year-olds reported binge drinking or drinking at risk levels and for 16- and 17-year-olds, the rate doubled to one in five.
