Last week, Bernardi, who favours ending multiculturalism, has called for the burqa to be banned and has linked same-sex marriage with bestiality, joined the South Australian ''racist'' pamphlet furore.

For a day last week, the eastern states forgot their usual boredom with South Australian politics when it emerged that Carolyn Habib, a councillor at the City of Marion and the Liberal Party's candidate in the seat of Elder, had been targeted with Labor Party flyers she condemned as ''very offensive''.

The flyers were ''a new low in a very filthy campaign in what has already been a dirty campaign over the past few weeks''.

On the back of the flyer, in stencil block letters, ''Can you trust Habib?'' was stamped over a brick wall, which some described as being ''bullet riddled'' (to my mind, it looked like a postered wall in Newtown or Fitzroy, but anyhow).

Labor denied its flyers were racist but, like Habib, Brandis saw an ''overtly racist'' attack against her.

Bernardi spoke for many when he wondered what was so racist about a pamphlet that seemed to do little more than illustrate Habib's name, but she said the wall evoked images of a war zone and her supporters argued that the emphasis on her name (she is half Lebanese), and the vaguely menacing way in which the pamphlet had been composed, constituted a ''thinly veiled racist attack''.

''This is a new low and it's very offensive,'' Habib said. ''It's just such a low. We should be talking about things that are important to the community, not feeding into a racist attack.''

But the ads did talk about things that are important to the community. On the front of the pamphlets were the sternly written lines: ''Since Habib was elected to Marion, council rates have increased by 18 per cent, a massive $445 hit to local families.'' It alleged that Habib ''will scrap a $100 million upgrade of Flinders Medical … wouldn't stand up against Liberal cuts for Tonsley [and] doesn't have the experience to deliver for us.''

No one from the Liberal leadership queried those allegations.

Instead, Attorney-General Brandis called a media conference to denounce the pamphlets' supposed racial element.

''The leaflet depicts Carolyn Habib in silhouette against what appears to be a bullet-riddled wall, using only her surname, with the injunction 'Don't trust Habib','' he said. ''This is, in our view, a thinly veiled racist slur.''

The Liberal Party promptly complained to the South Australian Electoral Commission about the flyers, but it is hard to see why.

According to a spokeswoman for South Australia's electoral commission, there is no provision under that state's Electoral Act to deal with allegations of racial slurs. The act can only decide whether material is ''misleading'', so presumably it can only tell us whether or not Habib's name is, in fact, Habib, or whether Marion council did, in fact, put up its rates by an extraordinary 18 per cent while she was on it.

According to Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, the only way to test allegations that the pamphlets are racist is through the Racial Discrimination Act's section 18C. Funnily enough, it is this provision - which makes it unlawful to ''to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate'' people on the grounds of their ''race, colour or national or ethnic origin'' - that Brandis wants to amend or repeal.

Soutphommasane says without section 18C, ''there'd be very few avenues available for those who believed they'd been racially vilified''.

So if Brandis succeeds in removing section 18C from the act, we would just have to take his word for it.