North East MP Tania Maxwell wants harsher line taken on convicted killers whose victims' bodies are missing

Tania Maxwell moved in parliament on Tuesday that a 2018 act be amended to allow the Department of Public Prosecutions to seek a court order to prevent murderers, who do not disclose the whereabout of their victim's remains, from being freed from custody.

"When someone has been killed and their body not recovered, their loved ones serve a life sentence of pain and misery," she said.

"It is small consolation, but consolation nonetheless, that a perpetrator should serve a similar sentence.

"There are established cases where offenders have played ongoing mind games with our justice system and victim families over the location of the body.

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"Let's take that power away from them."

Premier Daniel Andrews said Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes would engage with Ms Maxwell's Justice Party on the concept.

"We already have significant rules around this issue but we will look at that matter and it will be debated back and forth as it normally is and there'll be a respectful engagement," Mr Andrews said.

With parliament resuming on Tuesday for the last of four interrupted sitting weeks before November's election it is unclear if the proposal will be dealt with in the current term.

In 2016, 'no body, no parole' laws were enacted in Victoria and at the time there were seven convicted killers at the time who had not admitted where their victim's body was left.

Among them was Thomas Keith Halliday who killed his de facto and Mildura mother of three Shelley Joy Stephenson, 33, in 2006 and was jailed for a minimum 24 years in 2010.

It was alleged he put Ms Stephenson's body, which has not been found, in a hot water cylinder and filled it with gravel before dumping it in the Murray River.

Ms Maxwell made a veiled reference to such a scenario in flagging her proposal of no body, no release which is motivated by empathy for victims' families.

"Some might suggest this is an unfair proposition for killers who have disposed of a body in a river or another location that makes finding the remains near impossible," she said.

"But I say they should think of that before they choose to take a life and hide the primary evidence."

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