The fine for talking on a hand-held mobile phone while driving a car is going up to $433.

That is an increase of $144.

Drivers will also lose 4 demerit points, that is up from 3 points.

Last year Victoria Police fined 59,000 people for talking on the phone, something Senior Sergeant Dale Johnson calls a selfish and dangerous act.

"It is an offence to drive using a mobile phone and hopefully these fines and increased penalties will just highlight to people that danger and cut the behaviour out," he said.

Senior Sergeant Johnson says people try and justify it by saying it was their boss on the phone or they were rushing to get the children.

He says he has heard just about every excuse under the sun.

"The message is it's not worth killing yourself or killing someone else on the way to getting to somewhere because of the mobile phone," Senior Sergeant Johnson said.

"Any time you pass a vehicle and the driver's looking down into their lap, it's quite clear to us that they're probably texting or doing something with their phones."

The new fine and four demerit point penalty comes into effect on November 25.

It is however legal to use mobile phones when they are in an approved cradle linked by bluetooth or headphones.

The total ban on using mobile phones is also being extended from first year probationary drivers to all drivers holding a probationary licence.

Roads Minister Terry Mulder says they are the most significant changes to Victoria's road rules.

He says under the changes, a P-plater risks hitting his or her demerit point limit.

Mr Mulder says the Government was making the penalties tougher because the message was not getting through.

We are making no apologies for this because we know that these acts can, and have, caused deaths and injury on our roads," Mr Mulder said.

He says young drivers are the most vulnerable.

"It's a scary statistic that 88 per cent of young drivers using mobile phones report reading text messages and 77 per cent report sending text messages," he said.