The Andrews government will ban Nazi salute within a few months after the gesture was used at a protest attended by neo-Nazis at the weekend.
Victoria's attorney general, Jaclyn Symes, says the proposed law will take some work to get right.
Anti-transgender activists clashed with pro-transgender rights activists outside Victoria's parliament on Saturday after an event hosted by the controversial UK gender activist Kellie-Jay Keen. A group of about 30 men from the Nationalist Socialist Movement marched along Spring Street, repeatedly performing the Nazi salute.
Symes said on Monday that the Andrews government would take active steps to ban the gesture.
She told ABC Radio that the behaviour we saw on the weekend was disgusting, cowardly and disbelief all at once. It is clear that this symbol is being used to incite hatred against a variety of people, a variety of minority groups, and is being used as a recruitment tool. The opposition leader, John Pesutto, signalled that the Coalition was open to bipartisan support for the reform.
The event has caused turmoil in the Liberal Party, after Pesutto announced that he would try to expel the first-term MP Moira Deeming from the parliamentary party room due to her involvement in the anti-trans protest.
Pesutto said Deeming's position was untenable because of her involvement with speakers at the rally who had been publicly associated with far-right extremists. Deeming was contacted for comment but was advised not to speak publicly before the vote.
Keen has come under fire after a speaker quoted Adolf Hitler talking about transgender rights at one of her events.
Symes said on Monday that Victorians had zero tolerance for the behaviour of the Neo-Nazi protesters. She said the government would consult with a variety of groups as it worked out the details.
She told the ABC that it had to be done carefully. Some international jurisdictions have banned the salute outright, others have made it part of their anti-vilification laws. We ll look at some models and we ll get it done as quickly as we can. Symes flagged earlier this year that the government was considering banning the salute after white supremacists performed the gesture in public, including at a 26 January ceremony for First Nations Victorians.
Victoria became the first Australian jurisdiction to ban the public display of Nazi swastika last year. The ban was acted upon a recommendation from a parliamentary inquiry into the state's anti-vilification laws, which called for the criminalisation of all symbols of Nazi ideology.
Queensland vowed last week to make it illegal to display Nazi swastika tattoos as part of its ban on hate symbols that it says will be among the strongest in the country.