The rise of Pauline Hanson has been attributed to a growing backlash against a “democratic deficit” in all western societies as human rights are being distorted to favour minorities and silence the mainstream.

The assessment comes from the author of a new report that says the growing influence of identity politics, and the distorted application of human rights, is placing whole areas of public debate off-limits through the use of stigma and public shaming.

In Australia, those most responsible for distorting human rights have been the Australian Human Rights Commission and publicly funded human rights legal centres, according to the report’s author, Peter Kurti, an Anglican minister and lawyer….

Mr Kurti’s report, published today, says Australia is being confronted by “minority fundamentalism” that has all the features of religious fundamentalism: ideological fanaticism, intolerance of dissent and total certainty about truth and falsehood.

It says “newly-minted fashionable rights such as the right to equality are threatening to trump every other right with which they might conflict”, particularly freedom of speech and religion.