A top prosecutor under fire over how sexual assault cases are run in NSW has won the premier's backing amid a call to expand a review of all trial matters.
Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC on Wednesday revealed all sexual assault matters currently committed for trial would be audited by senior prosecutors.
It comes after a fifth judge aired concerns of "opaque, even secret, policies" leading public prosecutors to press on with unmeritorious rape cases.
Premier Chris Minns on Thursday expressed support for Ms Dowling, but declined to weigh in on the rare spat between senior prosecutors and the bench.
"I have confidence in the DPP, but it's not appropriate for me to comment about it," he told reporters.
"In the meantime, there's independence between the executive government and the prosecutor in this state. We need to allow them to do their job."
Ms Dowling on Wednesday rejected the "offensive and unwarranted" judicial criticisms, but said she wanted to reassure herself guidelines were being followed.
"(That audit) is to make sure every brief that is going to trial now in every sexual assault matter in the state satisfies the tests in the prosecution guidelines," she said.
Ms Dowling, who was appointed in August 2021, said judges often called her to complain about how concluded cases had been run by her office's 110 crown prosecutors and 480 solicitors.
But none of the judges criticising her office in the past year had raised the cases in question, she said.
"The suggestion that there are secret policies or opaque policies is completely preposterous," she told a parliamentary hearing.
Crime statistics show conviction rates for sexual assault matters in NSW resemble murder conviction rates, and have remained consistent over the past five years.
NSW's conviction rate in sexual assault matters is also equivalent to the national average.
But the DPP audit needed to be expanded across the justice system to determine why little over one in two sexual assault defendants were convicted, the Greens said.
Police failures to collect appropriate evidence and demands from the legal system for "an unreasonably high burden of proof" need to be investigated, Greens MP Abigail Boyd said.
"The idea that it's just one sector of the justice system where victim-survivors are being let down is a total furphy and the discouragement of bringing cases isn't the answer," she said.
One judge who criticised the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions recorded his "deep level of concern" in December that it had an unwritten policy or expectation that any allegation of sexual assault should be prosecuted "without a sensible and rational interrogation of that complainant".
While believing the complainant in the case in question gave honest evidence, Judge Robert Newlinds said she had no memory of the events and misunderstood the law.
"There was just no basis for her belief," he said.
The DPP backed its judgment to place before a jury the factual issue of the woman's capacity to consent while intoxicated.
Ms Dowling later also took the extraordinary step of referring Judge Newlinds to the bench's independent oversight body, the Judicial Commission of NSW.
