Veteran Logan councillor Russell Lutton considered suicide after CCC charge

A veteran Logan councillor has told a public hearing he considered taking his own life after he was charged by the CCC.

Veteran Logan councillor Russell Lutton considered killing himself after being charged by the CCC.

“As I was walking up Adelaide St, there were plenty of buses there and I thought, ‘I should just jump in front of a bus, and it will all be over’.

“It affected me that much.’’

Fellow councillor Trevina Schwarz said she went into a state of shock and visited a divorce lawyer in a bid to save her home for her husband and their children.

Mr Lutton told a Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee public hearing into the CCC’s actions in charging seven Logan councillors he was now working as a labourer on a third of his council salary.

Former Logan City councillor Russell Lutton is now working as a labourer. File picture: Richard Walker

“I have been a councillor for 34 years,” he said.

“I have won 10 elections; 10 elections selling my name, Russell Lutton, not a party. I won those elections fair and square as Russell Lutton, so I had a reputation. I represented a very tough community of people who did not understand bureaucracies, did not understand many things that affected their way of life. And I would assist them and help them.’’

The charges made Mr Lutton and other councillors ineligible to run for council. However, the charges were later dropped but a new council had already been elected.

“It shattered my life. I loved my job. I loved helping people. I loved my career in Logan City Council. It had ups and downs, but I loved the community that I served and I had a very personally rewarding time serving that community. This shattered my life. It affected my family. It affected my partner big time.’’

Mr Lutton did not like working with Sharon Kelsey who was not as co-operative as other chief executives he had worked with.

“She would just ignore any directions that councillors gave her and do what she wanted to do anyway.”

He said the 2018 Budget meeting was “the final straw”.

Former Logan City Council chief executive officer Sharon Kelsey. (AAP Image/Claudia Baxter)

“Her performance on that day was terrible. Here we have a person who is getting in excess of $500,000 a year leading a council with over a billion-dollar budget, and she could not give us any direction, or any idea where we were going to get the money to fund things.’’

He resented the CCC turning up at one meeting to hand out warrants.

“That to me was not right. We could have all been tapped on the shoulder and said, ‘Could you come outside? Someone wants to see you’, and done it in private; but I think it was designed to maximise the embarrassment for us.”

Logan councillor Trevina Schwarz said she went into a state of shock when she was charged with corruption by the CCC.

And she went to a lawyer to divorce her husband to save the family home for he and their children should she be forced to pay back the money outlaid by the council’s insurers for her defence.

Schwarz wanted the man she loved to “get away and live happily after” if it eventuated that she went to jail.

Former Logan City Councillor Trevina Schwarz says she felt like she was in a “nightmare”. Picture: Richard Walker

Schwarz told the hearing she woke up one morning “cold and shaking uncontrollably”.

“I did not want to live,” she said.

“I was in an inescapable nightmare.

“I felt that I had no purpose in life, that I was unproductive, that I was a huge burden on my family. I was unemployable.”

The CCC had treated her appallingly.

“I was up against one of the most powerful and influential government bodies that there is in Queensland, and for that I never thought that innocence would prevail,” she said.

“My fear was that none of the evidence would be taken into account, that I would be found guilty of the charges (even though) I was 100 per cent innocent.”

The divorce did not go ahead.

“My husband was furious and said that he would stand by me 100 per cent of the way and that love prevails,” she said.

For help contact Lifeline 13 11 14 lifeline.org.au; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636, beyondblue.org.au

Originally published as Veteran Logan councillor Russell Lutton considered suicide after CCC charge