Lord Mayor – Brisbane 2024

LNP 6.3%

Incumbent Lord Mayor
Adrian Schrinner, since 2019.

History
The City of Brisbane has had a popularly elected mayor for most of its history, including from 1934 to 1975.

The popularly elected mayoralty was restored in 1982, when Labor’s Roy Harvey was elected. Labor had been in power since 1961.

In 1985, Harvey lost to Liberal candidate Sallyanne Atkinson, the first Liberal to win the Brisbane lord mayoralty.

Atkinson held the mayoralty for two terms, losing to Labor’s Jim Soorley in 1991.

Soorley held office for four terms, being re-elected in 1994, 1997 and 2000.

In 2003, Soorley resigned and was replaced by Labor councillor Tim Quinn.

In 2004, Quinn was defeated by Liberal candidate Campbell Newman. Labor suffered a 15.6% drop in their primary vote. Newman was re-elected with a Liberal council majority in 2008.

In 2011, Newman resigned when he was elected state leader of the Liberal National Party. He went on to win the 2012 election and serve one term as Premier of Queensland before losing the election, and his own seat of Ashgrove, in 2015.

LNP deputy mayor Graham Quirk was appointed to finish Newman’s term, and he was re-elected in his own right in 2012 and 2016.

Quirk retired in 2019 and was succeeded by Adrian Schrinner. Schrinner had previously served as deputy mayor since 2011 and as the councillor for Chandler ward since 2005. Schrinner won a full term in 2020.

Candidates

Assessment
Schrinner remains the favourite to win re-election.

2020 mayoral result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Adrian Schrinner Liberal National 292,895 47.7 -5.8
Pat Condren Labor 189,832 30.9 -1.1
Kath Angus Greens 94,481 15.4 +5.0
Karagh-Mae Kelly Animal Justice 19,022 3.1 +3.1
Jeff Hodges Motorists Party 5,502 0.9 +0.9
Frank Jordan Independent 4,008 0.7 +0.7
John Dobinson Independent 3,461 0.6 +0.6
Ben Gorringe Independent 2,270 0.4 +0.4
Jarrod Wirth Independent 2,065 0.3 -0.2
Informal 16,425 2.6

2020 mayoral two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Adrian Schrinner Liberal National 306,905 56.3 -3.0
Pat Condren Labor 237,988 43.7 +3.0
Exhausted 68,643 11.9

Geographic breakdown

The LNP won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in 21 out of 26 wards. They won the 2PP in the 19 wards won by the LNP council candidate, along with the Labor ward of Morningside and the independent ward of Tennyson. Labor won the four other Labor wards and the Greens ward of The Gabba.

Labor gained swings in 23 out of 26 wards, ranging from a 0.5% swing in Hamilton to a 10.4% swing in Marchant. The LNP gained swings ranging from 1.55% in The Gap to 6.3% in MacGregor.

Labor’s strongest areas tended to be south of the river, particularly in the south-west along with the outer east and outer north. The LNP did best on primary votes on the north side of the river along with Chandler in the south-east.

The Greens had their highest vote in the inner city, peaking in The Gabba followed by the surrounding wards.

Mayoral election results at the 2020 Brisbane City Council election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, Labor and the Greens.

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20 COMMENTS

  1. @Ben. Just listened to your podcast episode with Professor Matthew Shugart. Would love to know what you think about BCC’s voting system regarding the SPM and effective number of parties and their meaning for BCC politics

  2. Interesting question! Well having single-member wards really shrinks the seat product model, but so does having a small assembly size, and Brisbane has both.

    Brisbane, ACT, NT and Tasmania all have assembly size of 25. But Brisbane and NT have an M of 1, while the others have an M of 5.

    So that’s a seat product of 25, which is an expected ENPP of 1.7, compared to a seat product of 125 which produces a party system of 2.25. So both produce a system with two main parties, but in the ACT and Tasmania you’re more likely to have two parties of relatively even size and maybe with a third, while in Brisbane and the NT you tend to have one dominant party and one smaller party. And that’s exactly what happens.

    I expect if the M or the S was increased you’d see a more diverse party system.

  3. Oops Brisbane has a seat product of 26. Still that only increases the expected effective number of parliamentary parties from 1.71 to 1.72.

  5. I did my own calculations and found that if the Greens optimistically gain their 3 most-competitive council seats for a total of 4 and Labor stay relatively the same, the ENPP increases to be above 2.

  6. Its been reported in the Courier Mail northside lawyer and sewing shop owner Tracey Price is set to be the Labor Lord Mayor candidate. It had been reported the party had given up on popular former state Labor MP Kate Jones being the candidate some months ago. Very hard to see Labor winning against Adrian Schrinner. And it could we be more cold winters ahead for Labor in Brisbane City council as the party priortises for the Queensland state election held later in the year.

  9. Given Sriranganathan’s high profile as councillor, he might be able to make the final 2CP count instead of Labor although I think it would be tough given the current 15% primary vote gap.

    Nevertheless, a close finish for 2nd and 3rd place is expected (similar to the race in Brisbane federal district) and certainly this contest will be tighter compared to previous mayoral elections.

  10. I agree Yoh An. It is a large gap, but the size of the Greens swings at the last federal election means that it is certainly possible.

    I wonder whether the electorate will be more against the LNP from their long control of BCC, or against Labor due to association with the state government which is declining in the polls. If the voters punish the LNP, it may become a genuine three-way contest. If they punish Labor, it becomes a LNP-Greens contest. The LNP remain the favourites in either scenario though.

  11. Question: why is the guide called Queensland councils if it only covers the BCC election? Shouldn’t it also cover other Queensland councils too (e.g Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Logan, Ipswich, Redlands, Townsville, Cairns, Toowoomba, etc)?

  12. It’s not called “Queensland councils”. It’s called “Brisbane City Council election, 2024”. I’m not covering the other councils because they don’t have partisan elections.

  13. Ben, I think Nether Portal is referring to the title for the hyperlink on the right-hand side of the homepage under ‘Electoral calendar’ which still says “Queensland councils”. Other sections including the drop-down menu for election guides have the correct title “Brisbane City council”.

  15. General discussion for BCC seems to be happening all over the shop so I’m just going to use this thread. I’ve already massively reined in my expectations for greens gains this election because their campaign has so far been incredibly lacklustre. they’ve announced an ambitious policy for redevelopment of the eagle farm racetrack but otherwise not much else. I would have expected something very significant on either active transport infrastructure, a big expansion in bus services or both by now. Jono Sriranganathan is running for mayor obviously, which I guess is overall a good pick, but they’ve yet to preselect candidates in very important wards like coorparoo (and yet curiously, they’ve had a candidate picked in northgate for weeks). The Labor campaign is practically nonexistent as far as I can tell. ATM it looks like LNP will retain council comfortably. Greens will probably get a few wards but nothing like the 8-10 like they’ve been talking up. I’m not even sure Labor will win a single one.

  16. @Furtive Lawngnome I suspect that Labor will win a few like Forest Lake, but might lose some. If voters punish Palaszczuk like the polls are saying they are set to do at the 2024 state election, then they may even lose Deagon to the LNP.

  17. Nether Portal, I think Furtive was referring to Labor not being able to net (gain) any from the LNP. I think Labor should retain all of their existing 5 wards although Morningside is probably the one most likely to fall if there is a huge swing against Labor.

  19. The Greens have announced what is seemingly a new list of target wards. They all seem to be LNP wards with the exception of Morningside, which is within the territory of the federal seat of Griffith they won last year.

    Still no candidate announced for Coorparoo, but they have announced candidates for Enoggera, Northgate and Holland Park. Coming from a significant way back on the first two, though a 5% swing from each major party would win them Holland Park.

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