Racist speech laws not on voter radar-MPs

Voters in the Victorian rural seat of Murray have never raised the issue of race hate speech with Nationals MP Damien Drum.

Nor have the farmers Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce regularly meets.

Yet some coalition MPs are agitating for changes like it's the most important issue facing the nation.

Mr Drum finds that frustrating. "It's just not on my radar at all," he told reporters at Parliament House on Tuesday.

"To come to Canberra and to find out that people want to talk about 18C - I think we should be grateful that we live in this country where we ... can totally have freedom of expression, freedom of speech."

Mr Drum said his constituents were worried about water, dairy prices, and getting jobs.

Mr Joyce said the people he meets talk about what they're earning and making sure they get treated fairly.

"They do not invite me into their shed to look around their packing shed and then say, 'Barney, sit down in this chair, I want to talk to you about the Racial Discrimination Act'," he told reporters.

A parliamentary inquiry into the Racial Discrimination Act will table its recommendation on Tuesday, including options for changing section 18C, which bans speech that offends, insults, humiliates or intimidates someone based on race.

It will also suggest broadening section 18D, which provides protections for artistic, academic and journalistic work, Fairfax Media reported.

A decision on which changes, if any, to pursue will be left to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Opposition frontbencher Linda Burney said Labor would not countenance any change.

"This is not about making the Racial Discrimination Act stronger, this is an ideological go at Malcolm Turnbull by a group of people that are malcontents," she told reporters.

"If there is a view that 18C will be watered down then it has the potential of unleashing some very ugly racism in this country."

Liberal backbencher Tim Wilson, a former human rights commissioner, says the prime minister understands the need for change, despite Mr Turnbull previously resisting calls to overhaul the laws.

The concerns of Liberal MPs representing multicultural electorates had been whipped up by Labor and others, he said.

The preferred option of Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm is to repeal section 18C but he also says changing the wording to "harass" would be a significant improvement.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommanasane told a Senate committee there had been a drop in the number of complaints received by the Human Rights Commission under Section 18C.

The figure was 116 complaints in 2013/14, 116 complaints in 2014/15 and 77 in 2015/16.

Mr Soutphommanasane said a wide range of community groups and government agencies had come out in opposition to changing the law.