“For too long we have seen freedoms of the individual diminish and become devalued. The Coalition government will strive to protect and restore them.” The terms of reference for the inquiry are broad. Senator Brandis wants the commission to target Commonwealth laws that shift the burden of proof and interfere with freedom of speech, religion, and freedom of association. He also wants to target laws that retrospectively extend criminal law, restrict access to the courts and “inappropriately delegate legislative power to the executive”. He has asked the commission to specifically focus on commercial and corporate regulation, environmental regulation and workplace relations.

“It's essentially an audit of the entire body of Commonwealth law,” Anthony Mason professor of law at UNSW George Williams said. “It's an enormous task that Senator Brandis has set the Law Reform Commission. They'll have to sift through the body of Commonwealth law looking for infringements with a large range of freedoms and rights.” But Greens senator Penny Wright said the inquiry was “extremely broad” and the issues it was attempting to address concerned the need for a bill of rights, which Senator Brandis does not support. She said Senator Brandis' position was based on an ideological view that religious freedoms should trump “not being discriminated against”. “AG Brandis is using the language of freedom, but this government has shown it is not to be trusted on such matters,” Senator Wright told Fairfax Media.

Professor Williams welcomed the review, saying it will expose the fact that there is a far wider range of freedoms being infringed in Commonwealth law than people realise. “I broadly support what he's trying to do because I think what often happens is that laws are made and then they're forgotten,” he said. “I think it's a very good idea to go back and look at the laws on the books to identify problems that otherwise simply don't get attention.” “But the real proof of this will come, not in the identification of problems, but whether the government ultimately has the political will to fix what will be a broad range of problems that this audit will identify.” Mr Williams said the review can be expected to throw up "known" problems in areas like corporate regulation, but it may also identify some “very tricky problems”, particularly in anti-terrorism law.

“That's where some of the sharpest infringements of rights occur but where there's going to be much less of an appetite on the part of the Coalition to fixing those problems,” Mr Williams said. “All it's doing is asking the commission to identify human rights violations and to determine if they're justified,” he said. “At this stage it's quite an innocuous process. It's not going to lead to any changes directly. It's identifying problems and it will be good to know those problems.”