STEVEN FENNELL explores both sides of the Nicola Gobbo debate, wrongful convictions and the fracture of Australian justice.
This article is designed to provoke robust and honest debate on one of the most contentious episodes in modern Australian legal history, the Lawyer X scandal. At its centre is Nicola Gobbo (Informer 3838), a Victorian criminal defence barrister who secretly acted as a high-level police informant against many of the clients she was professionally obliged to defend. Her actions helped secure convictions during Melbourne’s violent gangland wars but at the cost of fundamentally undermining the solicitor-client relationship.
The scandal raises a sharp question about wrongful convictions: Were individuals such as Tony Mokbel and Faruk Orman rightfully convicted of serious crimes, yet convicted in a wrongful manner because the process was irredeemably tainted by the betrayal of legal professional privilege? Or does the gravity of the gangland violence justify bending the rules in exceptional circumstances? As of April 2026, the legal fallout continues to divide opinions between those demanding criminal accountability and those who view Gobbo as a flawed but effective tool against organised crime.
The Shadow of the Bar: Systemic Crisis in Australian Justice
Nicola Gobbo’s conduct between 2005 and 2009 as a registered police informant while representing criminal clients lies at the heart of the crisis. The High Court of Australia unanimously condemned her actions and those of Victoria Police as a “fundamental and appalling breach” of the lawyer-client relationship that “corrupted the criminal justice system” and “debased fundamental premises” on which it rests.
This breach directly contributed to convictions that were later quashed, raising the uncomfortable distinction between substantive guilt and procedural fairness. If evidence or strategy was compromised by a lawyer secretly assisting the prosecution, can the resulting conviction stand as legitimate justice?
The Argument for Conviction: The “Rule of Law” Perspective
Advocates for criminal prosecution of Gobbo and her Victoria Police handlers rest their case on the absolute sanctity of the solicitor-client relationship, a cornerstone of fair trials protected by long-established common law principles and professional rules.
- Systemic Corruption and Dangerous Precedent: Allowing such a profound breach to go unpunished suggests the state may ignore the law when it suits enforcement purposes. The High Court’s strong language underscores that this was no minor ethical lapse but a corruption of the justice system itself.
- Right to a Fair Trial and Wrongful Convictions: By covertly informing against clients like Tony Mokbel and Faruk Orman, Gobbo helped engineer what critics describe as “show trials.” Convictions obtained through the subversion of legal professional privilege are not victories for justice; they represent miscarriages of justice. In these cases, the accused may well have been guilty of serious offending, yet they suffered wrongful convictions in the procedural sense—the convictions were secured by means that undermined the very fairness of the trial process.
- Failure of Accountability: Despite the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants (costing taxpayers well over $120 million) and the subsequent appointment of a Special Investigator, no criminal charges were laid against Gobbo or the police officers involved. The Director of Public Prosecutions declined to prosecute in 2023, and the Office of the Special Investigator was disbanded in February 2024. Many view this outcome as the state protecting its own.
Gobbo is currently represented in her civil matters by lawyer Angela Sdrinis. She was permanently struck off the roll of legal practitioners, reflecting the severity of her professional misconduct.
The Argument for Support: The “Pragmatic” Perspective
While few endorse Gobbo’s methods in principle, her defenders—frequently former senior police figures and sections of the public traumatised by years of gangland violence—emphasise context and outcomes.
- Ending the Gangland Wars: From 1998 to 2010, Melbourne experienced over 30 murders linked to underworld conflicts. Gobbo provided police with unparalleled access to the inner circles of major drug syndicates, acting as a “unique weapon” that helped dismantle networks responsible for widespread violence and trafficking.
- Community Safety Over Procedural Niceties: In this view, the “noble cause” of protecting the public and stopping further bloodshed outweighed strict ethical rules. Without her information, figures like Tony Mokbel might have continued their operations, costing more innocent lives.
- Personal Sacrifice: Gobbo has lived in hiding for years under credible death threats from the criminal networks she helped expose. Supporters see her as a deeply flawed informant who rendered a significant public service at enormous personal cost to her career and safety.
Motives, Costs, Time and the High Stakes
Gobbo’s motivations appear complex: a claimed desire to halt the gangland bloodshed and serve the greater good; the thrill of operating as a double agent close to power; and elements of self-preservation amid her entanglement with serious criminals.
The scandal has already imposed massive financial and temporal burdens on Victoria. The Royal Commission alone exceeded $120 million, with additional tens of millions spent on the Special Investigator’s office, legal defences, appeals, and related litigation. Gobbo reportedly received a $3 million settlement from police in 2010. Her subsequent negligence claim against the State of Victoria was dismissed by the Supreme Court in June 2025, with her ordered to pay the state’s costs.
If arguments broadly justifying her conduct or shielding state actors from accountability were to prevail further, Victoria could face a wave of additional compensation claims, retrials (where possible), and eroded public confidence in the justice system—potentially costing taxpayers tens or hundreds of millions more while weakening deterrence against organised crime.
If, on the other hand, meaningful accountability remains absent, it risks normalising ethical shortcuts by law enforcement in pursuit of results. This could encourage future breaches and leave those who suffered tainted convictions without adequate redress. The Human Source Management Act 2023 (Vic) now imposes a stricter regulatory framework. It generally prohibits the use of lawyers as human sources except in tightly controlled circumstances (including prior Supreme Court authorisation where privileged information is involved), but critics argue the legislation still contains loopholes and arrived too late to prevent the original scandal.
A Question for Debate: Rightfully Convicted, Yet Convicted Wrongfully?
The Lawyer X affair forces a difficult choice: Does uncompromising adherence to the rule of law, including the inviolability of legal professional privilege, best protect society in the long term? Or must it sometimes yield to the immediate demands of public safety during times of exceptional criminal violence?
Were the gangland figures whose convictions were quashed (including Tony Mokbel, who walked free in early 2026 after prosecutors dropped further proceedings) wrongfully convicted, or were they rightfully convicted of grave offences but in a manner so corrupted that the convictions could not be allowed to stand?
There are no simple answers. The convictions may have reflected substantive guilt, yet the betrayal of the lawyer-client relationship rendered the process illegitimate in the eyes of the law. This tension—between justice in outcome and justice in process—lies at the heart of the ongoing debate.
As Victoria grapples with the cultural and legislative legacy of the scandal, the question remains pressing: In the fight against serious crime, how far should the state be permitted to go? The answer will influence the balance between individual rights, public safety, and institutional integrity for decades to come.
Key Legal References
- AB (a pseudonym) v CD (a pseudonym); EF (a pseudonym) v CD (a pseudonym) [2018] HCA 58, [10]–[12] (High Court description of the “fundamental and appalling breach”).
- Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants, Final Report (2020).
- Human Source Management Act 2023 (Vic), especially Part 3, Division 3 (regulation of lawyers as human sources).
- Legal Profession Uniform Conduct (Barristers) Rules 2015 (Vic), rr 27–29, 101 (obligations regarding confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and client privilege).
- Gobbo v State of Victoria [2025] VSC 334 (13 June 2025), [162] and following (dismissal of negligence claim on grounds including prior 2010 settlement and voluntary assumption of risk).
Pictured from left; Lawyer X, Nicola Gobbo, former High Court judge Geoffrey Nettle, who investigated the scandal and Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd. Picture: Supplied