Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan hit go this week on harsher bail laws, a machete ban and expanded weapons search powers for police as part of sweeping legislative changes.
She insists the reforms, to be debated in parliament next week, are needed to target a group of about 300 repeat youth offenders, rising aggravated burglaries and knife crime.
RedBridge director Kos Samaras, Victorian Labor's deputy campaign director from 2005 to 2019, likened the party campaigning on crime to the dead character Bruce Willis portrayed in The Sixth Sense.
"If you're voting on that issue come election time, you're not voting Labor and never will," he told AAP on Friday.
People in outer the suburbs have lived with crime for decades and generally don't believe a "heavy-handed" approach because it could easily impact their children, the pollster said.
"There's no real win or upshot here," Mr Samaras said.
"Implement your laws but then why do you send all of your MPs to start campaigning on it?
"Most people's response to that will be 'You've been in power 10 years' and that's a bit gross."
He pointed out former premier Daniel Andrews' office and the Victorian Labor campaign team did not "take the bait" during the "African gangs" furore in the lead up to the 2018 state election.
The Andrews government stuck to the issues it wanted to talk about, Mr Samaras said, and ended up being returned for a second term with an increased lower house majority.
"No matter how loud people screamed about it we knew that the people who were going to vote on it we're going to be on the conservative side of politics," he said.
"It's equivalent to basically federal Labor trying to out-nasty the coalition on beating up on refugees.
"If you're on the Labor side of politics and you're trying to outperform the conservatives on whose the nastiest on cracking down on teenagers who are repeat offenders, you aren't going to win that battle."
Meanwhile, a Labor-affiliated retail union is calling on the Allan government to go further with its machete ban.
The proposed laws would ban their sale and possession from September 1 but it wants to force shops to lock all bladed items, including kitchen knives, behind the counter to keep staff and customers safe.
"Retailers already lock up cigarettes and expensive alcohol and ban their sale to children under the age of 18 years," Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association Victorian secretary Michael Donovan said.
Victorian minister Steve Dimopoulos didn't completely dismiss the idea but argued the machete ban and greater weapons search powers would put a "big dent" in knife crime.
"Let's see where we're at in a few months when these changes are actually implemented," he told reporters.
A proposed search window of up to six months instead of 12 hours is not proportional and there is a lack of evidence it will increase community safety, the Federation of Community Legal Centres says.
"Rather, what it will do, is create environments of fear and harm for those groups in our community who already experience racial profiling by police," its chief executive Louisa Gibbs said.
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