Michael Daley has served as the Attorney General of New South Wales since 2023. On Tuesday, he found himself defending the future of Sally Dowling SC, who was appointed as Director of Public Prosecutions in August 2021 for a 10-year term, during a tense parliamentary hearing that exposed the deepening rift between NSW's prosecution office and its judiciary.
The public grilling reflects mounting strain in the criminal justice system. Long-serving District Court Judge Peter Whitford has aired concerns of "opaque, even secret, policies" leading public prosecutors to press on with unmeritorious rape cases. The DPP's office has rejected these claims forcefully. "The suggestion that there are secret policies or opaque policies is completely preposterous," Dowling told a parliamentary hearing.
The controversy extends beyond case judgments. In recent months, allegations have surfaced that a 17-year-old Indigenous boy was permitted by Judge Penelope Wass to perform a Welcome to Country as part of his evidence, with approval from both defence and prosecution; later that month, details including the boy's name were supplied to 2GB media outlets by an ODPP media officer.
The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling has rejected allegations she directed her office to leak information about a teenage Indigenous defendant to media organisations. Yet Judge Wass alleged the Director of the ODPP, Sally Dowling SC, directed the media officer to release the information. The dispute has now become the subject of parliamentary inquiry.
At the heart of the institutional tension lies a structural question that legal observers say requires urgent attention. There is no good reason in 2026 to allow DPPs to be less accountable than anyone else for their conduct and their decisions, with the present "non-accountability" bringing the criminal justice system into disrepute. Judges face oversight through appellate review and, in some jurisdictions, dedicated judicial commissions. The DPP's office has no equivalent independent watchdog.
The parliamentary hearing did not resolve whether Daley's government intends to reappoint Dowling when her current term expires, nor whether legislative measures might be introduced to address accountability gaps. What is clear is that institutional dysfunction between prosecutors and judges is now spilling into the political sphere, forcing the Attorney General to account publicly for decisions that traditionally sit within prosecutorial independence.
Whether the government sees these conflicts as temporary disputes or symptoms of deeper structural problems remains unanswered. The direction it charts will shape how NSW's criminal justice system manages the tension between prosecutorial autonomy and public accountability for years to come.