Australian Human Rights Commission Australia and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), Shadow report to the CERD Committee – 8 July 2010 • There is a need to better recognise, showcase and share the strategies and initiatives which are already working and find ways to adapt and develop them. • Any strategy to address cyber-racism should include a wide range of measures to reach and empower different categories of people involved in cyber-racism (including instigators of racism, participants in racist online groups, observers to those web pages and people harmed by the racism). • Traditional regulatory responses alone will not solve the issue of cyberracism - the problem is too big and fast moving for regulation to be effective. • One of the most powerful ways to start addressing cyber-racism is to harness the positive potential of the Internet, social media and social marketing to educate the community about racism and empower them to participate in positive social change. • Any strategy to address cyber-racism needs to focus on young people the biggest users of Internet tools. Within that strategy there is a need to find ways to empower young people to create their own solutions. • There is a need for better communication and co-operation amongst all the parties who engage in cyber space – including the representatives that participated in the Summit. • There are gaps in the research around cyber-racism, and most definitely gaps in understanding about the issue of cyber-racism. In the Commission’s view, this needs to be linked to human rights education and strategies to address systemic racism. Recommendation 37: That evidence based strategies to address cyber-racism be included as part of a coordinated, national approach to anti-racism/national action plan to address racism. 7.9 Counter-terrorism laws 130. The Australian Government has introduced more than 50 new counterterrorism laws since 2001, often without adequate consideration of their potential impacts on human rights. 102 Some aspects of these new laws have eroded common law protections of fundamental rights and freedoms. 103 For example, these laws have enabled: detention without charge for 12 days; 104 secret searching of Australian homes and planting of surveillance devices, restricting movement through control orders issued by courts; and special powers of detention for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. 105 131. The Commission recognises the recent reviews of the National Security Legislation by the Attorney-General; the Review of Security and CounterTerrorism Legislation by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) in 2006; Inquiry into the proscription of ‘terrorist 35