Race-hate speech laws must be changed so people can "call out" Muslim terrorists, perverts and child mutilators, a One Nation senator has told parliament.

Malcolm Roberts says Australian Islamists are the real beneficiaries of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, comparing restrictions on race-hate speech to "Stalinist repression".

"If your Muslim Sudanese neighbour is engaging in female genital mutilation or your Syrian Muslim cafe owner is a terrorist building a bomb or maybe just the Afghan Muslims in the public housing flat next to you are molesting small children, chances are that you are afraid to speak out," he said.

"Ordinary, decent people are simply afraid to speak the truth.

"We want to be able to call out Muslim drug dealers, child mutilators, hate preachers , terrorists and perverts."

The senator used a debate on proposed changes to race-hate speech laws in parliament on Tuesday to launch a tirade against Australian Muslims, claiming the community was "bulging" with hate-preachers and terrorist apologists.

None of them had been brought before the Human Rights Commission for race-hate speech, because the laws only applied to non-Muslims, he said.

He likened the Greens to Islamic State for defending the existing laws, claiming they painted those who disagreed with them as wrong and immoral.

"The smug, elitist sense of superiority that infuses these koala-hugging commos appears to leave them without the slightest awareness of the terrible repression which they champion in their pursuit of ideological conformity with their own frankly anti-human world view," he said.

A report by a federal government-dominated Senate committee examining the changes recommended the bill be passed.

"The committee has found that this bill will make overdue reforms to the Racial Discrimination Act, strengthening the protections against hateful speech based on race, colour or national or ethnic origin on one hand, and enhancing the rights to freedom of speech that all Australians enjoy on the other," it said.

A Labor dissenting report said there were no compelling arguments for the government's proposed changes to the Act from the words "offend", "insult" and "humiliate" to "harass and intimidate".

It said procedural changes to the way the Australian Human Rights Commission deals with race-hate complaints should go ahead, but only if they do not increase red tape, add costs or delay or reduce access to justice.

The AHRC argued nine of the government's proposals would "result in additional red tape for the commission, would be likely to cause additional delay and added costs for parties to complaints, and would impede access to justice in relation to meritorious complaints".

The AHRC process changes have broad support on the Senate crossbench, but the wording changes to 18C do not, leaving the government with little choice but to dump or split its legislation.

The government has flagged amendments to the legislation which it says were the product of discussions with AHRC president Gillian Triggs.