Free speech advocates say they have detected a change in Senator Brandis' tone recently, and they believe he has been persuaded by religious, ethnic and indigenous leaders, who have been lobbying against changing the race discrimination laws.

The dispute is likely to get worse, especially if Senator Brandis introduces, as some expect, a new criminal offence of racial vilification. IPA executive director John Roskam said he would rather there were no changes to the law than a new criminal ban on hate speech. He also said it had ''got back to me'' that Senator Brandis had been criticising the IPA in private conversations.

On ABC1's Q&A program on Monday, Senator Brandis said the Abbott government was determined to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act ''in its current form''. It is that phrase which angers the IPA.

''That was not the tone and intention of what Senator Brandis expressed before the election,'' Mr Roskam said. He said Senator Brandis had led him to believe he would repeal section 18C entirely. Senator Brandis condemned the law - which makes it unlawful to ''offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate'' someone because of their race or ethnicity - when columnist Andrew Bolt breached it for an article he wrote about ''white'' Aborigines.

Mr Roskam cites a speech Senator Brandis gave in July 2012 to the Australian Liberal Students' Federation, where he said: ''If we win the next election … one of my first priorities will be to remove from the Racial Discrimination Act the provisions under which Andrew Bolt was dragged before the courts''.