In January, Coroner Simon McGregor found the 2020 death of Ms Nelson in custody was preventable and called for an urgent review of the Bail Act.
Ms Nelson was arrested in December 2019 on warrants for breaching bail and suspicion of shoplifting and represented herself in a bail application, which was denied.
Following dozens of calls for help, she died in her cell at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre days later from complications of Wilkie's syndrome while suffering from heroin withdrawal.
Under Victorian government reforms set to be introduced to parliament, the contentious reverse-onus test for bail would not apply to low-level offenders.
But the changes won't be implemented for 12 months after the bill passes or completely remove the unacceptable risk test, according to working documents from the justice department obtained by The Age.
Ms Nelson's life partner, Uncle Percy Lovett, said what happened to her should never happen again.
"The government needs to make real changes to bail laws to stop so many people getting locked up before they have even been sentenced," he said in a statement on Monday.
Mr Lovett's lawyer Sarah Schwartz said it would be disrespectful to him and Veronica's family for the government to delay implementing the reforms, declaring it a "matter of extreme urgency".
"Uncle Percy has already been let down by the Victorian government ... in the preventable death of his partner," she told reporters.
"It would be devastating if bail reform was delayed, if the prison population continued to rise, and if more people like Veronica entered into custody."
Bail laws were strengthened after James Gargasoulas drove into a busy Bourke Street Mall in January 2017, killing six people and injuring dozens more.
He was on bail at the time.
The reverse-onus test, requiring an accused person to demonstrate why they should be granted bail, was previously only used for the most serious offenders but was expanded in 2018 to cover those caught repeatedly carrying out low-level crimes such as shoplifting.
It has led to the proportion of unsentenced people in Victorian prisons rising from 34.1 per cent in January 2018 to 43.9 per cent in January 2022.
The changes have disproportionately impacted women, particularly Aboriginal women.
Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Nerita Waight said the post-Bourke Street bail law reforms were the biggest failure of Daniel Andrews' premiership.
"The situation that happened in Bourke Street was horrific, it was not acceptable," she said.
"But we also need to acknowledge that was an instance of bad application of the law, not bad law.
"We shouldn't be making changes to laws based on emotion."
Ms Waight said the proposed bail reforms should realistically be implemented within three months of passing parliament, in line with the previous changes.
Treaty and First Peoples Minister Gabrielle Williams said the final version of the bill was yet to be taken to cabinet.
"It's not particularly helpful to comment ahead of time when work is very much still underway, when consultation is still underway, and when it's not a final position," she said.
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