There are numerous ways for community members to research discrimination and human rights issues. You may want to find out more about a particular ground of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (ADA), or find out the difference between federal and state legislation, or find legal decisions which discuss a particular point of law.

There is detailed information about discrimination issues at the Anti-Discrimination Board’s website, located at http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/adb. This includes factsheets on the individual grounds of the ADA such as racial discrimination or sexual harassment. You will also find our complaints form, information on how to lodge a complaint, what training courses are offered, as well as publications and posters for sale, and discrimination statistics.

You can find decisions heard under the ADA at the Administrative Decisions Tribunal (previously Equal Opportunity Tribunal) at http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/adt or using the ADT link from the Board’s homepage. Decisions can be browsed by decision category, complainant name or decision number, or you can use Lawlink’s search template to focus your search.

The ADB's website also provides links to discrimination legislation and human rights indexes as well as federal and state anti-discrimination and human rights agencies. As federal human rights laws apply in NSW, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) is also a useful website to look at. It includes in-depth information about its functions and provides links to related organisations. You can sign up to receive email alerts in various HREOC-related subjects. Refer to http://www.hreoc.gov.au for more information.

Austlii, located at http://www.austlii.edu.au, contains the full text of Federal and State legislation, as well as decisions from major Australian jurisdictions and links to overseas cases. Scaleplus, located at http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/, provides full text legislation from Commonwealth and non self-governing territories. Some jurisdictions are updated more quickly than others so check the currency of the information.

You can trace the progress of bills at the NSW Parliamentary website, located at
http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/. This site is easy to use, and you can search bills by topic, alphabetically or by the proposing member. The second reading speech can be downloaded from here too, and this often provides information about how a particular law came about. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to access many of these items.

Other sources of online human rights information can be found through the National Library of Australia, which provides links to search engines and subject directories. You can browse various subject directories till you find one that includes a section on human rights, or you can use a search engine, either searching on a topic, or on the name of a known human rights agency which may provide quality links. Refer to http://www.nla.gov.au/pathways/pthw_global.html#allwl.

Many libraries have online catalogues which may hold useful information. To search a library catalogue, go to the Australian Libraries Gateway at http://www.nla.gov.au/libraries/ and search for your local library. If you find another library holds the publication you are after, you may be able to get it on an interlibrary loan.

Legal Information Access Centres (LIACs) are an initiative of the NSW State Library and the Law and Justice Foundation, and operate out of the State Library and many public libraries. LIACs hold a variety of hard-copy and electronic legal information, and have trained staff to assist you with legal research. For more information visit the State Library’s LIAC site on http://liac.sl.nsw.gov.au/ or phone 9273 1558.

Australian & NZ Equal Opportunity Law and Practice/CCH is a two-volume looseleaf service which provides case summaries and commentary for discrimination cases in all states, territories and the Commonwealth, as well as the full text of the various legislations. Yearly cumulations of cases are a handy reference. This resource is available in hard copy in the State Library as well as university libraries.

There are several commercially produced alert bulletins which provide summaries and commentary on discrimination and industrial issues. They include Discrimination Alert, published by CPD Thompson Legal and Regulatory – you can view a sample at http://www.cpd.com.au/cpdnews/allnews.asp, and Workplace Express, published by Workplace Express – details can be obtained at http://www. workplaceexpress.com.au.

To find Australian journal articles and conference proceedings, you can search an electronic database which indexes Australian literature. AGIS (Attorney-General’s Information Service) indexes legal material and APAIS (Australian Public Affairs Information Service) indexes political and social science journals, and is a rich source of articles on the issues surrounding discrimination and the groups most affected by discrimination.

These databases provide some full text documents, but some may have to be obtained on interlibrary loan. Discussion papers and reports from Law Reform Commissions or universities are often published on the internet and can be located using a search engine such as google (http://www.google.com), or by looking on the parent organisation’s website.

When you consult a website or reference, note who publishes the information and when it was last updated so you can evaluate the quality of that information. There are further hints on evaluation at the New Mexico University website at http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html.

For further information you could refer to one of the many books on legal
research, e.g Effective Legal Research (2nd Ed), by Irene Nemes and Graeme
Coss, or ask your local librarian.