Revealed: Queensland Labor’s ultimate power couple

They’re both respected members of the legal profession and heavy hitters for the Queensland Labor Party. Des Houghton reports.

Kerri Mellifont and her husband Peter Russo are a Labor power couple both on the public payroll.

Peter Russo, now Labor’s Member for Toohey, was named The Australian’s Australian of the Year in 2007 after successfully representing terror suspect Dr Mohamed Haneef.

At Russo’s intervention, Commonwealth prosecutors withdrew a charge that Haneef, who was working on the Gold Coast, had supported a terrorist organisation.

Mellifont, more recently, worked as counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability and was involved in several public hearings in September 2019.

Mellifont was admitted into practice in 1994 and started at the bar in 2001. She has almost 30 years’ experience in criminal and regulatory law.

Mellifont was senior counsel assisting Queensland Floods Commission in 2011 and senior legal officer at Forde Inquiry into Child Abuse in 1998.

Kerri Mellifont

Peter Russo

She was named the Women Lawyers’ Association woman lawyer of the year in 2017.

A year later, The Courier Mail’s Kelmeny Fraser revealed that Mellifont was called by the State Government to give legal advice on to advise on whether one of three emails sent to the Premier’s private email from Transport Minister Mark Bailey’s [e-mail] account had to be disclosed.

Mellifont’s advice was obtained during the processing of a Right to Information request from the State Opposition for the release of any of Mr Bailey’s private emails relating to ministerial business.

At the time there were Opposition calls for a review into why an external lawyer was secretly engaged to advise on controversial emails.

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s office refused to say who engaged Mellifont. Mellifont, too, declined to name who assigned her. She cited client confidentiality. At the time The Courier-Mail stressed there was no suggestion of impropriety by Mellifont.