He may well be uncomfortable, but that didn't mean he wants the law to get involved. Yet if the man who is engineering this legislative change feels unsettled about people picking on particular racial groups, maybe that should be a tiny warning. Two days after Q&A the Attorney-General gave a doorstop interview in Melbourne where he complained about an ALP leaflet circulating in the South Australian election that attacked a Liberal candidate, Carolyn Habib. He said the flyer showed Habib in silhouette against a bullet-riddled wall with the caption ''don't trust Habib''. This, he thundered, was ''a thinly veiled racist slur''. The slurs may not be so thinly veiled once s.18C ''in its current form'' is ditched. Be careful what you wish for, George.

However, it is comforting to see that Brandis has got up the wick of that ludicrous flat earth ''policy'' outfit the Institute of Public Affairs. A report in the Herald on Wednesday had the IPA's top man, John Roskam, complaining that Brandis was backsliding on earlier promises to completely trash s.18C. Now the AG's wording is more circumspect and qualified. Traitor. George had better stiffen up or there'll be hell to pay. Actually, there probably won't be much hell at all, because apart from the IPA, a few in the government and some wagging tails over at News Corp, no one is insisting that our freedoms are being abridged by the RDA. In any event, what thwarted outbursts about race are begging to be unbottled? In fact, it's decidedly odd. Back in the 1980s, when a group of us were involved in the Free Speech Committee in Sydney, no right-wingers could give a fig about free speech. It was almost entirely a lefty cause and the meetings were dominated by grizzly men whose beards smelt of stale cheese. That's how left-wing it was. Anyway, back to Q&A and its various infuriations. After dispensing with s.18C and Chinese property buyers, the panel was asked about another free speech question: News Corp columnist Chris Kenny's defamation action against the ABC.

''Isn't Tony Abbott being a complete hypocrite for criticising the ABC's Chaser program for defending itself against Chris Kenny?'' Surprisingly, Brandis didn't think Abbott was being a hypocrite and he wanted the ABC to stop defending the case and just apologise (presumably with a bag of taxpayers' money). The position of the government and News Corp is this: by all means in the name of free expression cast a few slurs at people based on their race, but whatever you do, don't satirise a columnist from the Murdoch stable. The case concerns the pointed response by the Chaser boys on The Hamster Wheel to Kenny's tiresome tirades against the ABC. The segment needs some context. It's just after the September federal election and the Wheel points out that almost an hour after Abbott's victory, Kenny says on Sky News the new government should start cutting the ABC's budget. Classic Murdoch stuff. The Hamster Wheel responds by agreeing that the ABC is disgusting and should be slashed. After all, this is the network ''that broadcasts images of Chris Kenny strangling a dog while having sex with it''.

And there was the superimposed image on your screens. Tasteless, funny, satirical? Maybe any or all of those things, but the broadcaster is perfectly entitled to defend this case on the basis of an honest opinion or comment. There may even be a qualified privilege defence on the basis of a response to an attack. It's a classic case for a jury to bring its view of contemporary values to bear on the pleadings. Instead, the ABC is being relentlessly bullied into surrendering. You don't hear about taxpayers' funds being squandered in its defence of the defamation actions brought by Ian Macdonald or the Swisse vitamin people. As it happens, the ABC did well in round one.

The judge knocked out Kenny's most important defamatory imputation: ''The plaintiff is a pervert who had sexual intercourse with a dog.'' That's gone, and what remains are pleadings that Kenny is a ''contemptible and disgusting person'' and that he deserved to be ''compared to and portrayed as a person who has sexual intercourse with a dog''. Importantly, costs were not awarded to the plaintiff. Interestingly, Kenny did not plead another meaning that arose from the satire: that he's a bore. That could be readily defensible on the grounds of truth. Twitter @JustinianNews