Greg Donnelly

Gregory John Donnelly is an Australian politician. He has been an Australian Labor Party member of the New South Wales Legislative Council since 2005, when he was appointed to a casual vacancy caused by the resignation of Treasurer Michael Egan. A relatively junior backbencher, Donnelly currently serves on several parliamentary committees and is the party's duty MLC for the Liberal-held electorate of Hornsby.

Biography

Donnelly was born in Perth, Western Australia, growing up in the suburb of Mandurah and attending Christian Brothers College in Fremantle. He subsequently studied economics at the University of Western Australia, before doing his masters in industrial relations. He received his masters in 1986, and began working as a union official with the right-wing Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association's New South Wales branch, on the other side of the country. He rose to become its state secretary, and served in that role from 1996 to 2005.

In January 2005, Treasurer Michael Egan abruptly resigned from parliament, creating a casual vacancy in the Legislative Council. Donnelly was the only candidate for the position, and was duly appointed to the vacancy on February 23. As is party practice, he was appointed as the duty MLC for an opposition-held electorate, in this case staunchly conservative Hornsby, in the north of Sydney. The appointment was the cause of some criticism from the opposition, who claimed that he had few ties to the area. John Brogden, the then-Opposition Leader, even went so far as to offer to "show him where the northern beaches are", although in reality Donnelly had lived in the electorate since the late 1990s. As is often the case with newer members of parliament, Donnelly has been relatively low-profile since his first weeks in office, though he has often acted as a spokesperson for the government in relation to the Hornsby area.