A NSW parliamentary committee has found that the state's Director of Public Prosecutions, Sally Dowling, gave false evidence under oath about her office's role in pitching a story to radio station 2GB concerning the sentencing of a young Indigenous offender. The report, released Tuesday 7 July 2026, runs to 75 pages and documents 14 separate instances of false or misleading evidence given by Dowling to the inquiry The Guardian.

The upper house committee split 4-3 in finding that Dowling authorised the pitch to 2GB and then "falsely denied having done so" when questioned by the committee. The finding sits at the centre of a dispute that has consumed a legislative inquiry originally convened for a narrower purpose: examining protections against identifying children in NSW court proceedings, an offence under state law.

The October 2024 incident

The episode traces to 25 October 2024, when Ben Fordham's breakfast program on 2GB aired details of a sentencing hearing involving an Indigenous child. The child was not named on air, but the broadcast mischaracterised a courtroom acknowledgment of country as a "welcome to country" — a factual error the inquiry's report notes in its account of how the story was framed. A subsequent police investigation into whether the child had been illegally identified concluded without charges The Guardian.

The committee concluded there was "no genuine public interest" in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions "proactively and surreptitiously" pitching the story, and that doing so risked identifying the child and would "most likely constitute a breach of the prosecution guidelines."

Central to the committee's case is testimony from ODPP media manager Sally Killoran, who described a meeting with Dowling and an external media adviser the day before the broadcast. Killoran testified the adviser suggested 2GB "would be more interested" than the Daily Telegraph, and that no one in the room objected — leading her to believe she had approval to proceed with the pitch. Dowling has acknowledged her office pitched the story but has "strongly rejected" any suggestion she personally authorised it.

A judge's allegations

The inquiry's findings were shaped substantially by a 68-page submission from District Court Judge Penelope Wass, who alleged Dowling organised the leak. Wass characterised the episode as "designed to embarrass and defame me and to undermine the independence of a district court judge with whom the ODPP has had issue." Wass is among several district court judges who have criticised the ODPP's handling of sexual assault prosecutions during Dowling's tenure — a friction that predates the 2GB episode and forms part of the backdrop against which the committee weighed her credibility.

The committee has recommended that NSW Attorney General Michael Daley consider establishing a formal inquiry with compulsory powers — meaning the ability to compel testimony and documents — to examine the findings and determine whether grounds exist to remove Dowling from office. That recommendation, rather than the findings themselves, is what now carries the practical weight: NSW does not remove a sitting DPP lightly, and any formal proceeding would need to establish findings to a standard beyond a parliamentary committee's civil, majority-vote process.

Daley has rejected the report outright, calling it "a stitch-up from the outset" and describing it as "the worst… that I have seen in my nearly 21 years in parliament." His intervention is notable given his own appearance before the same Portfolio Committee No. 5 — Justice and Communities at a Budget Estimates hearing on 11 March 2026, part of the broader parliamentary record building toward Tuesday's report. Dowling herself had earlier flagged to the committee, in an April 2026 letter, a separate criminal matter in which NSW Police believed an ODPP staff member had leaked information — an indication that leak concerns around her office extend beyond the 2GB episode.

The 4-3 vote split is itself a data point worth noting. A committee finding delivered by a bare majority, on a question of a serving DPP's honesty under oath, invites scrutiny of the process as much as the conclusion — which is presumably why Daley's "stitch-up" framing has found some traction. Top prosecutors have publicly backed Dowling in the report's aftermath, suggesting professional opinion within the prosecutorial community is not aligned with the committee majority WAtoday.

What happens next depends on Daley, who as Attorney General holds the discretion over whether to establish the compulsory-powers inquiry the committee has recommended. Given his public dismissal of the report, that step appears unlikely in the near term without further political pressure. The underlying tension — between a parliamentary committee's civil findings and the higher evidentiary bar required to remove a statutory officer — will likely determine whether this matter proceeds toward Dowling's removal or dissipates as a contested, unresolved episode in the ODPP's recent history.