Michael Daley

Michael John Daley (born 1 November 1965) is an Australian politician who has served as the attorney general of New South Wales since 2023. He previously served as the leader of the opposition and leader of the New South Wales Labor Party from 2018 to 2019. He has been a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Maroubra since 2005.

Early career In 1998, having completed his legal studies he was admitted to the Supreme Court of New South Wales as a legal practitioner and began to pursue a career as a lawyer, and worked for a year in a law firm in central Sydney before spending five years as a senior in-house lawyer with NRMA Motoring and Services.

Daley was elected as a councillor to Randwick City Council in 1995 and served as deputy mayor from 2000 to 2004.

Political career Daley is aligned with the Labor Right faction. He was elected to represent Maroubra for the Australian Labor Party on 17 September 2005, replacing previous Labor member Bob Carr, who announced his retirement from politics. As a result, John Robertson was elected unopposed as Keneally's replacement, and Daley was appointed as Shadow Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Finance and Services and was elected as the Leader of the Labor Party in New South Wales and became the 38th NSW Leader of the Opposition.

On 19 March 2019, a few days before the state election, a video from September 2018 surfaced in which Daley made comments about Asian immigration in Sydney. Daley said "Our young children will flee and who are they being replaced with? They are being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs," and "So there's a transformation happening in Sydney now where our kids are moving out and foreigners are moving in and taking their jobs". Daley apologised from his comments, stating "What I was referring to was housing affordability in Sydney ... I could've expressed myself better, no offence was meant." The party was unsuccessful in the election a few days later, and Daley subsequently stood aside as leader and withdrew his candidacy for the subsequent leadership ballot after initially stating that he would contest it. Jodi McKay became the new permanent as party leader and opposition leader in June 2019 after Daley's resignation.

On 30 May 2021, following the resignation of McKay as party leader, Daley announced he would run again for party leadership. On 4 June 2021, he dropped out of the leadership contest, allowing Chris Minns to be elected leader unopposed.

Personal life Daley is of Irish Catholic background. He was educated at Marcellin College, Randwick, finishing in 1983. He spent 13 years as a customs officer with the Australian Customs Service, during which time he studied law at night.

Daley married Christina Ithier in 2005 whom he met "at a photocopier" at his legal firm in 1997. She had two children from a previous marriage whom Daley counts as his own. He and Christina have since had two other children.