The father, 45, would sit next to his daughter on the lounge and touch her when covered by a large blanket while watching television with her two older brothers.

He later abused her in the bedroom she shared with her three sisters.

The father at one stage told his daughter he would make it his life mission to stop abusing her but he couldn't.

Supreme Court judge Lex Lasry told the man on Thursday that given the importance of the relationship between a father and daughter, "your efforts to control yourself were nowhere near sufficient.

"She did what she could to resist you, but she was in no position to stop you.

"The judge said that apart from the victim, the man's wife had suffered significantly from his offending.

"She feels responsible and is struggling with the knowledge that she was unaware of what you were doing," the judge said.

"Obviously she trusted you and relied on you."

Justice Lasry said that over a two-year period, the father had exploited his daughter's trust "to satisfy a sexual urge you found difficult if not impossible to control.

"However, you had plenty of time to think about what you had done and reflect on the wrongfulness of it. You knew what you were doing was wrong but you simply could not control yourself. In the simplest of terms, you should have tried much harder."

The judge said the father told his daughter that he would admit the abuse if she ever told anyone but if she did so, it would not only affect them but the whole family.

"It was, you said to her, a matter for her to decide. In my view what you said to your daughter was simply a sign you did not have the strength to desist from your conduct," the judge said.

The father, who pleaded guilty to two counts of committing an indecent act with a child under 16 and four counts of incest over a two-year period from late 2012 to November 2014, was jailed for six years and eight months with a non-parole period of four years.

In a Victorian first, the case was heard in the Supreme Court because some of the offending occurred after the state Parliament introduced baseline sentencing in November 2014.

Baseline sentences are specified prison sentences that Parliament intended as the median sentence for seven nominated offences, including incest.

The maximum penalty for incest is 25 years' jail, while for committing an indecent act on a child under 16 it is 10 years' jail.

The baseline sentencing laws also set minimum non-parole periods for the seven baseline offences, including 60 per cent of the total sentence if less than 20 years.

Justice Lasry said he had no alternative but to set a non-parole period of four years for the father because of the new legislation.

"Whether I think that is appropriate given your prospects for rehabilitation and your need for psychological intervention is of no consequence," he told the father.

Justice Lasry noted that "predictions about how complex the sentencing process might become as a result of the [baseline] provisions seem to be well based, and this was of particular concern for the time and resources of busy trial courts".