Melissa Donnelly


Melissa Donnelly is the National Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), an Australian trade union with coverage of more than 198,000 Commonwealth Public Servants, as well as those in the Northern Territory Public Service and the ACT Public Service. is the CPSU's youngest ever national secretary, as well as the third woman and the first working mother to hold the role. Donnelly is also a member of the National Executive of the Australian Labor Party.
Donnelly was first elevated to the role, following tenure in the union's legal and industrial relations team and its Executive Committee, when former National Secretary Nadine Flood resigned for health reasons in 2019. Donnelly was most recently reelected to the position in December 2023.
Under Donnelly's leadership of the union, its membership declined by more than 9% between and . Between 2022 and 2024 Australian Public Service employee numbers grew by more than, leading to the absolute number of CPSU members increasing to be about than when Donnelly assumed leadership. However CPSU density continues to decline, in line with broader trends in the Australian trade union movement since the 1980s.
DateCSPU membershipApproximate APS union density *
30 June 2013166,14932.7
30 June 2014157,94334.6
30 June 2015152,24236.3
30 June 2016155,60734.1
30 June 2017151,94833.0
30 June 2018150,25831.1
30 June 2019146,75830.4
30 June 2020150,36329.6
30 June 2021153,57128.0
30 June 2022159,17925.5
30 June 2023Data not found170,086
30 June 2024184,85824.3
30 June 2025Not yet published198,529

Note that the PSU Group covers some employees outside of the APS, so the true APS union member density will be slightly less than shown in the last column of the table.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Donnelly was responsible for championing a "groundbreaking" working-from-home deal with the Australian Public Sector Commission in 2023 which allows public sector employees to seek unlimited working from home flexibility arrangements.