Attorney-General George Brandis has defended the right of Australians to be ''bigots''.

Speaking in the Senate on Monday, Senator Brandis made the case for controversial changes to race hate laws, which News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt was in 2011 found to have breached in relation to two articles he wrote about fair-skinned aborigines.

The Coalition promised before the 2013 election to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act ''in its current form'', but indigenous Liberal MP Ken Wyatt has threatened to cross the floor to oppose the change.