The Attorney-General began to bait his trap with the announcement yesterday of the appointment of Institute of Public Affairs policy analyst Tim Wilson to the Human Rights Commission as "freedom commissioner", but this is only part of the plan.

Brandis has thought deeply about rights and liberty during the past few years.

He watched Labor's attempts to stifle free speech and cow the media. He has considered both the philosophical and political dimensions of the issues involved. And he came to government with an audacious plan.

Brandis believes he can expose the Left as morally bankrupt opportunists who pay mere lip service to genuine concepts of human rights and reclaim for the Liberals - small-l liberals, in particular - the mantle of liberty.

The immediate response to Wilson's appointment suggests his strategy can succeed.

Twitter lapsed into incoherence. "Arch-conservative authoritarian Tim Wilson appointed to Human Rights Commission," one twit spluttered, their outrage apparently blinding them to the fact that Wilson is a proudly gay libertarian campaigner for marriage equality.

Supposedly more measured minds also missed the real strategy. "What does Tim Wilson mean when he says 'I will put freedom on the offensive'?" Andrew Giles, the Labor member for Scullin, Victoria, demanded to know.

"What does this mean for the protection of human rights?"

The Greens chimed in with "Appalled by Tim Wilson human rights appointment. Ideological appointment to drag away from human rights into a free-for-all."

All these and more had read the headline of Brandis's media release announcing the appointment and the first few paragraphs, but failed to finish.

The Attorney-General praises Wilson as "one of Australia's most prominent public advocates of the rights of the individual".

"He has published and broadcast widely on the topics of personal freedom, liberal democratic values and the rule of law," Brandis continues. "He was at the forefront in thwarting recent attempts to erode freedom of speech, freedom of the press and artistic freedom - rights and freedoms Australians have always held precious.

"The appointment of Mr Wilson to this important position will help to restore balance to the Australian Human Rights Commission which, during the period of the Labor government, had become increasingly narrow and selective in its view of human rights."

Then came the clincher. Yet it was missed. "Next year, I intend to bring forward reforms to the commission," Brandis says.

These reforms, The Australian understands, are yet to be finalised. Yet it is almost certain that they will require legislation. And that will mean Labor and the Greens will have to make a stand.

What will they back - the human rights Brandis speaks of in his media release, or the human rights establishment and the culture of complaint with its professional victimhood, hurt and outrage, which can be assuaged only by public money?

Brandis's opposition counterpart, Mark Dreyfus, appears to have spotted the wedge and ducked the debate for now.

Instead, he simply "questioned" the appointment, saying: "By appointing Mr Wilson, Senator Brandis has sent a strong signal about exactly the kind of blatant political agenda he wishes to pursue as Attorney-General."

Dreyfus's riposte, however, ignores Brandis's philosophical commitment to human rights - let alone its long evolution.

The Attorney-General studied human rights law at Oxford under the famed legal philosopher and constitutional scholar Ronald Dworkin.

He was also taught by Joseph Raz, a giant in legal, moral and philosophical circles but little known outside the academic world.

After he returned to Australia, Brandis spent eight years teaching jurisprudence at the University of Queensland, concentrating on the work of the great liberal and libertarian philosophers, figures such as the American thinkers Robert Nozick and John Rawls.

This has led Brandis to develop a personal philosophy of human rights and politics.

The Attorney-General has a deep belief that conservatives and the Right of his own party have made a serious mistake in recent decades by opposing too much of the human rights agenda that has been put forward.

He believes liberals have missed a key opportunity to embrace the debate and enshrine freedom of speech as the greatest of all rights. Worse, he believes his side of politics has failed to advance a genuine agenda of liberty while also failing to expose a fundamental contradiction in the Left's position on human rights.

Brandis believes the Left - as former Labor attorney-general Nicola Roxon proposed to do with her anti-discrimination legislation - seeks to protect people from being offended when they speak and act on human rights.

And he knows that laws can prevent people from being offended only by limiting the freedoms of others. He has a fundamental objection to what he sees as the Left's human rights agenda: advancing some freedoms by limiting others.

With all this in mind, Brandis believes his side of politics should be on the front foot in the debate. Hence his bold step yesterday.

"For years the Labor Party has been allowed to get away with sailing under false colours by claiming the human rights debate as its territory," the Attorney-General tells The Australian.

"To our shame, we on my side of politics have too often conceded that ground to Labor when we should have been fighting for it ourselves."

Brandis puts human rights at the heart of the Liberal Party's philosophy.

"The reality is that while the Labor Party was created to defend class interests and the Country Party was created to defend sectional interests, the only political party represented in the Australian parliament which was created for the very purpose of protecting the rights of the individual is the Liberal Party," he says.

"Human rights is our core business and it is my firm intention to ensure that the real human rights, in particular the fundamental human freedoms, are restored to the heart of the human rights debate, where they belong."

Brandis makes his views on the importance of these matters amply clear in yesterday's statement.

He says: "I have asked Mr Wilson to focus on the protection of the traditional liberal democratic and common law rights, including, in particular, the rights recognised by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights" - the article mandating freedom of expression.

Brandis has already staked out this territory as a key battleground.

He has said the abolition of the "Andrew Bolt" provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act, which make it unlawful to offend and insult people because of their race, will be his key priority.

The move to amend or repeal Section 18C of the act, a key election commitment, will change the definition of racial vilification to eliminate at least two of the grounds that were used in a court ruling against the columnist over articles about light-skinned Aboriginal people.

Brandis has held consultations about whether his amendments should go further and wind back other potential grounds for liability.

The Attorney-General sees the new Human Rights Commissioner as a strong and capable ally.

"I chose Tim Wilson for this role because I saw in him a person who had the philosophical integrity, political smarts and personal toughness to take this cause to the heart of the action," he says.

And he has made it clear that he will press on with his agenda in the face of opposition from the ALP: "If the Labor Party does decide to adopt an anti-freedom position then we will deal with the crossbench senators," Brandis says.

Wilson, too, is spoiling for a fight.

"I'll be putting freedom on the offensive, where it belongs," he tells The Australian. He nominates free speech and media freedom as his two key priorities, saying both had come under attack under the last government.

"Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential for a free society," Wilson says.

"A free media is a direct extension of the importance of free speech and are one and the same in importance.

"We need to remove the restrictions that have stopped people saying what they think and believe.

"Only through a contest of ideas will our society flourish," Wilson continues, condemning the proposals by the previous Labor government to change anti-discrimination laws to ban conduct that "offends or insults".

"We shouldn't have restrictions on what may offend or insult because they just end up restricting speech and stop incorrect ideas being challenged and rebutted," the new commissioner says.

Wilson expresses concern at the muted response to the media regulation and anti-discrimination laws put forward under Labor.

"It is clear that there were proposals in the last parliament to restrict free speech and freedom of the press," he says. "Thankfully those were defeated, but it was deeply concerning to see them so easily come under attack and so little opposition to be voiced in the community, apart from a few learned sources.

"I was disappointed that some people, who should have been staunch defenders of free speech, didn't stand up and assert the importance of these essential features of our democracy."

Now, the fight for freedom is on. The trap has been set.