Every so often, issues arise on the political landscape that offer a window into political representatives who are most deeply touched by them. Race is always one of them. It inspires a passion unseen on most other subjects.

Consider the Abbott cabinet where, up until now, leaks have been rare. Yet proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act inspired a wholesale leak this week.

In unison, quiet government backbenchers such as the Indigenous MP Ken Wyatt have seen fit to speak out, as has Zed Seselja. Indigenous Labor senator Nova Peris was never so eloquent than when she described how it felt to be called a “nigger” by a fellow athlete.

Each of these members talked from experience of racism. The danger of this debate for the government is that it has taken them, and many other Australians, straight back to that moment – in the schoolyard, on the oval, in the pub – and forced them to relive it all over again.

Under attack, some politicians have a natural inclination to come out swinging. While others close down and consider their best option.

On Monday the attorney general, George Brandis, was hurling haymakers against those critical of his unravelling of the Racial Discrimination Act. “People do have the right to be bigots you know.”

It sent the Senate chamber into an uproar and Penny Wong interjected.

“I will take that interjection, Senator Wong,” said Brandis.

“Senator Wong interjects, 'Yes, George, you go out there and defend the right to be bigoted.' Well, you know, Senator Wong, a lot of the things I have heard you say in this chamber over the years are, to my way of thinking, extraordinarily bigoted and extraordinarily ignorant. But I would defend your right to say things that I consider to be bigoted and ignorant. That is what freedom of speech means.”

Wong turned her back on him. She was angry. So angry she thought better of responding on the day, lest she say something that she would regret. She saved it up.

“When he described me as bigoted, I turned around. As someone who has been the target of bigotry before, it was a difficult thing to hear. There’s no doubt there is a personal emotional response, an evoked emotional response.”

Wong is famously reluctant to talk about her personal life. Her mother is Anglo Australian, her father Malaysian Chinese. In her maiden speech, Wong credited her parents and some of the influences in her life. Her paternal grandmother, Madam Lai Fung Shim, known to her and her brother Toby as Poh Poh, was a barely literate woman who raised her family in Malaysia alone in postwar poverty.

Wong moved to Australia in the seventies, to a semi-rural area on the outskirts of Adelaide. There, the Wong children were the only Asian kids in the school. In public and in private, she will not go into any incidents but anyone who grew up a migrant kid in the seventies intuitively knows the score. Her formative political years prior to entering the Senate in 2002 were intimately entwined with the explosive entry of Pauline Hanson into the political scene in 1996.

And those memories came back to her on Monday.

“It does bring back …”, but the words trailed off for a more careful reflection of her childhood. “I really had to think about whether I wanted to get up and speak because I was actually really emotional,” she said.

“It does bring back … for people who have been the subject of racial abuse, when we are reminded of that, when we hear an echo of it in the parliament or public debate, of course it brings back some of those emotions.

“You remember how you felt as a child, you remember how, watching my younger brother, who was much less resilient than I, watching how he responded.

“You emotionally react to those things and I had to think about whether I actually gave that speech because I wanted to make sure when I did make a contribution that I was in a place where I could do the subject matter justice and say what I wanted to say and not be too caught up in my own response.”

Wong said the experience of marginalisation drove her into politics and her first speech paid tribute to her brother Toby: "I want to make special mention of my younger brother Toby, who turned 30 on the day that I was elected to this place and died ten days later.

"Your life and death ensure I shall never forget what it is like for those who are truly marginalised."

So when she came back to the Senate for a debate on the Brandis draft, she described the hurt and the damage.

“I’m thinking of the young me today, the kid who is being abused or the person on the bus,” she told the Guardian. “It’s not just protecting me, I feel a responsibility to speak for people who don’t have the platform I have or being able to stand on the floor of the parliament.

“You hope, on issues of race, that we have gone somewhere different as a nation and then you have a debate like this and you realise those of us who believe in acceptance, standing up against prejudice, thought we have moved on from that debate.

“I think George saying this is about the rights of the bigots really laid bare the philosophy behind these changes.

“For them, it seems to be an abstract philosophical or legal argument. For them it’s a game, it’s a debate about words and abstract principles.

“For people who have experienced racism, it is a deeply personal debate, and it’s actually a debate about real people and real hurt.

“It’s a debate about real people in Australia, what happens on our buses and our trains, in the pubs on the football fields and on our streets. It’s about the message that our parliament sends and what I find missing, apart from the very offensive things in the debate, is empathy and compassion."