Outgoing NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour has hit out at critics of his long-running police bugging probe, declaring: "I will not be bullied."
Mr Barbour has spent more than two years gathering evidence and questioning witnesses at the highest levels of the NSW Police Force as part of Operation Prospect, which examined a decade-old police phone-tapping scandal.
But he has conceded he will not be close to finalising his report when his term finishes at the end of the month.
Mr Barbour has already been hauled before a NSW select committee inquiry and on Friday faced a fresh upper house inquiry into why Prospect is still not complete.
The probe is also trying to determine who was behind an explosive leak to Fairfax Media which published a front-page story in April revealing Mr Barbour was considering referring Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas to the DPP for possible criminal charges.
Greens MP David Shoebridge, who has been a vocal critic of Prospect and was one of the Legislative Council members who pushed for the establishment of this inquiry, said it was "disgraceful" that Mr Barbour's investigation into one phone-tapping operation had taken longer than the landmark Wood Royal Commission into the entire NSW Police Force.
"From the very outset of this investigation, I have been at pains to clearly articulate that it would be a very protracted and very resource-intensive investigation," a defiant Mr Barbour said on Friday.
"This inquiry is on track.
"It is clear to me that there are many people trying to frustrate it. It is clear to me that there are many people who are trying to come up with all sorts of reasons and assertions and allegations and misinformation, and indeed often fabrications, about it."
But he would not be put off, he said.
"It will not deter me from doing what is right and proper in relation to the steps that I must follow, and I will not be bullied by people putting forward misinformation into the public domain about what we are doing," Mr Barbour said.
He also revealed he had taken the extraordinary step of asking members of his team to sign statutory declarations denying any contact with Fairfax journalist Nick McKenzie.
A senior investigator at the NSW Crime Commission, Tim O'Connor, has told the inquiry that Mr McKenzie indicated in conversation with him that a Prospect investigator who had previously worked in Melbourne was the source of his April 17 story.
Mr Barbour said three investigators in his office fit that bill - and all three signed statutory declarations swearing they were not behind the leak.
Earlier on Friday, Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton and Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb SC both denied that their offices were responsible for the leak.
Mr Barbour's time in office comes to an end on June 30, when former Commonwealth ombudsman John McMillan will take the reins.
Mr Kaldas and his boss, Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, are also expected to give evidence to the parliamentary inquiry.
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