The federal Attorney-General's bid to amend that provision of the Racial Discrimination Act which makes it unlawful for someone to act in a manner likely to ''offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate'' someone because of their race or ethnicity, and which he says prevents individuals from engaging in robust free speech, has run into opposition in the Coalition party room.

As a result, Senator Brandis has been forced to compromise on his wish to take a definitive reform proposal to cabinet for approval and instead issue a draft exposure bill allowing further public consultation and input from community organisations concerned that the changes will weaken protections against the racial intimidation or vilification of individuals or groups.

The changes outlined by Senator Brandis were always going to be controversial, motivated as they were by a high-profile Federal Court case in 2011 in which conservative columnist Andrew Bolt was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act.

Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that two newspaper articles by Bolt implying light-skinned people who identified as Aboriginal did so for personal gain and advancement were not written in good faith, contained factual errors, and would have offended a reasonable member of the indigenous community.

Justice Bromberg ordered an apology and or correction to be printed in the offending paper, but left the two parties to the case to make their own arrangements giving effect to his judgment.

After the verdict, then opposition leader Tony Abbott warned against restricting ''the sacred principle of free speech'', which he summed up as the ''the right of people to say what you don't like, not just the right of people to say what you do like''.

Senator Brandis' proposal to oblige the courts (and the Human Rights Commission) to give priority to general community standards - and not the standards of any particular group - when assessing future breaches of the Anti-Discrimination Act reflects just how great was the indignation felt in conservative political circles by the Bolt verdict. There's little doubt the umbrage was, and is, compounded by the belief that political correctness acts to suppress debate and restrain freedom of speech.

That freedom is rightly valued in Australia, even if there are already considerable legal restraints on what people can say, publish or broadcast.

Senator Brandis argues that removing the words ''offend, insult and humiliate'' from section 18C of the act (but keeping the word ''intimidate'') will not erode existing protections against the intimidation of individuals. Indeed, he asserts that adding the word ''vilify'' to the act for the first time will actually enhance protections from racial vilification. Critics of the changes, however, argue the proposals will weaken shields against so-called hate speech, and that they are out of step with laws in other jurisdictions.

On Monday, Senator Brandis did his reform cause no good by asserting in Parliament that people ''do have a right to be bigots'' and to say things that other people would find insulting, offensive or bigoted. Unfortunate though his use of the word ''bigot'' was, Senator Brandis is correct to say that implicit with the notion of free speech is the risk that some groups or individuals may be offended, humiliated or ridiculed.

Ironically, the unreasoning response in certain quarters to Senator Brandis' remarks only served to underline their validity.

Caveats around freedom of speech are essential in order to prevent racial hatred and incitements to violence; arguably the Anti-Discrimination Act, existing laws of libel and defamation and social conventions provide the required protection. But there is little doubt that the current threshold test under which claims may be made alleging a group was - or individuals were - insulted, humiliated or offended by a newspaper article or a radio broadcast is low and ought to be raised.

Excessive legislative restraints on freedom of speech may spare the feelings of a particular group, but will not actually lessen the incidence of bigotry or intolerance. A robust democracy can and should be able to withstand occasionally impolite debate.