New bail law proposals in Victoria will come into effect in two stages, the government says.

Premier Jacinta Allan, attorney-general, Sonya Kilkenny, and police minister, Anthony Carbines, expanded on the government's new laws - widely condemned by Indigenous, human rights and legal groups - at a press conference on Tuesday, saying they wouldn't leave parliament this week until they were passed.

The first stage will see the scrapping of the principle of remand only as a "last resort" for accused youth offenders - a tenet of the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child, which Australia has ratified, as well as a recommendation from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC).

In its place, community safety will become the "overarching principle" for magistrates and judges when deciding on bail applications for children and adults.

Furthermore, the bill will introduce two offences: "Commit an indictable offence while on bail for indictable offence" and "breach of condition of bail". The former will only apply to adults, the government says, and would only be a summary offence for bail breaches that are "more administrative in nature like failing to report or meet curfew".

Both offences will carry up to three months imprisonment in addition to any other sentence imposed on alleged offenders found guilty.

Criminalisation for bail breaches for children in Queensland was introduced in 2023, which required the suspension of the state's Human Rights Act. Experts told National Indigenous Times there were examples of children being forced to choose between living with their abusers or breaching bail and going to prison - instead choosing homelessness.

Despite Victorian being a signatory to the Agreement on Closing the Gap, Ms Allan says she expects the number of people on remand to increase. Nearly half of the people currently incarcerated in Victoria have yet to be sentenced.

"These tough new bail laws include measures that will start immediately, and our justice system has the capacity for these changes when these changes come into place …" the Premier said on Tuesday.

"I want to make this also clear to the Victorian parliament; we won't be leaving parliament this week until these tough new bail clauses are passed through the parliament."

Last week, the Productivity Commission's Closing the Gap data highlighted the failure of several states to help close the gap on Indigenous incarceration - both youth and juvenile. Advocates say governments enacting laws entirely contradicting the agreement have only exacerbated this.

"No one wants to see kids on remand," Attorney General Sonya Kilkenny said last week, "but we know there are young offenders and other offenders out there who are committing the very worst types of crime that is driving community fear".

The government has spruiked their new laws at the "toughest" in the country, with last week's press release using the word "tough" or "toughest" 33 times. Ms Allan did interviews with both major Victorian newspapers over the weekend to defend the changes.

Opposers of the changes, which were only introduced 18 months ago, say they will do nothing to improve community safety and are only a "knee-jerk" reaction by the government in response to poor polling and a concerted effort by conservative media, the police, and some high-profile influencers.

An open letter on Monday to the government by the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS), along with 91 representatives of Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations (ACCOs), community services, family violence and legal sectors, said the new laws would "lead to greater criminalisation of Aboriginal communities and other marginalised communities".

Aunty Donna Nelson, whose daughter Veronica's death in custody in 2020 led to the eventual changing of the laws - which Ms Allan last week argued, in hindsight, were wrong - said, "Returning to discriminatory legislation towards our people will undoubtedly result in another mother losing their child".

VALS' chief executive Nerita Waight said it was a "sad day in the colony to have to yet again advocate for Victoria's bail laws to be safer and not discriminate against our community".

Addressing the Premier, she added: "Your proposed bail laws will mark a dark stain in Victoria's history, where you clearly haven't learnt from past mistakes and instead seek to entrench and criminalise our people."