A Dunedin student has been fined almost the maximum amount for disorderly behaviour after setting fire to a chair in the student area of the city last month.
The lighting of fires in North Dunedin was ''an ongoing issue'', which continued to attract extensive national and international publicity, Judge Stephen O'Driscoll told 18-year-old Luke Sorensen in the Dunedin District Court yesterday.
The problem tied up valuable resources and caused damage to property and potential danger to life, the judge said.
He told the defendant the court was not going to respond ''with a wet bus ticket''. Sorensen admitted a Summary Offences Act charge of disorderly behaviour and was fined $900, court costs $132.89. The maximum penalty for the charge is a fine of $1000.
Judge O'Driscoll said he specifically imposed such a high fine to take into account the maximum penalty available and to send a stern warning that those who behaved in such a way would be dealt with severely.
Sorensen was arrested just after midnight on March 24 after police saw him holding a cigarette lighter to an office chair in Great King St.
The officers managed to stop the fire before it took hold, prosecutor Sergeant Ross Hutton told the court. The defendant was intoxicated and said a group of mates had pressured him to set fire to the chair.
''Look around this courtroom and see who's standing beside you - it's not your mates,'' Judge O'Driscoll told Sorensen.
At 18, the young man could expect to be subject to pressure from a variety of people during the course of his life, the judge said.
