Lord Mayor – Brisbane 2024

Labor probably won’t gain any wards and may even lose one or two (Deagon is a possibility given that it’s usually marginal and includes Moreton Island which is conservative). That’s why they’re working with the Greens. Because if the LNP loses its majority then they could form a coalition government. But I think the LNP should hold on despite losing a few seats to the Greens or maybe teals.

Labor gaining a few wards seems possible enough given that the mood doesn’t feel great for the LNP – Northgate, Calamvale, Enoggera (if it doesn’t go Greens) are all plausible gains, but I could easily see them failing to gain any as well. I don’t think there’s a chance they lose any except maybe Morningside to the Greens. There is absolutely no way they lose Deagon lol.

There are no prominent independents running beyond Johnston (an incumbent), so speculating about the idea of teal candidates is pointless unless one emerges very quickly with a high enough profile to have any chance at all.

Labor are very much not working with the Greens. All parties have rejected the idea of a coalition, and I expect if there is a minority on council then legislation will be negotiated vote-by-vote. A minority LNP council would rely mostly on negotiations with Labor, a minority Labor council would rely on both LNP and Greens at various points, and a minority Greens council would rely mostly on Labor.

Nether Portal, I really don’t know where you’re getting this idea from that Labor are working with the Greens. Price has repeatedly ruled it out, attacked the Greens several times and has implied Labor won’t be referencing the Greens on their HTVs.

Agree Babaluma, Deagon is held by Labor leader Jarred Cassidy and his profile will probably help Labor hold on fairly comfortably.

Also, there is still the possibility that the LNP retain their majority as they can afford to lose up to 5 seats. I only think a few seats will end up changing hands with the ones most likely being Paddington and Northgate.

Forgot Enoggera, Coorparoo and Walter Taylor as decent pickup opportunities (most likely for the Greens), but even so that is only five seats at risk with others considered safe for the LNP.

Central is much more in reach for the Greens than Enoggera (which is very much a three-way contest), and Holland Park is a reasonable chance for them too. The Gap could be at risk too but I think it’s the least likely potential Greens gain.

LNP have kicked off their advertising for this election. Schrinner for Mayor is the focal point of the campaign.

The advertisement also highlights their Walter Taylor and Paddington incumbents. I’ve only seen one variation, perhaps there’s more, perhaps this one has just been haphazardly geo-targeted to me.

However this ad suggests that LNP sense that the Greens are their biggest contenders in the race. Seems that their strategy will be sandbagging and holding their two most vulnerable LNP vs Greens contests. These are coincidentally wards overlapping with Watson-Brown’s division of Ryan.

Perhaps they anticipate that it will be difficult for Greens to overcome any of their larger margins elsewhere. Or maybe they have some polling that suggests that effort is futile on the Griffith side of the river (Chandler-Mather’s territory). They might also leave Griffith side strategically to be a messy fight between Greens and Labor.

Maybe though, there will be more ads in this series highlighting different ward candidates.

Maybe you are right that the sandbagging strategy employed by the LNP in BCC will work out again. But this time round it is much tighter, as the LNP have at least 5 seats with margins under 3% almost like Labor in South Australia going into the 2014 election.

I still think the LNP are favoured to hang on, but like SA Labor in 2014 they could end up being forced into a minority with 13 or fewer seats. Adam Allan in Northgate seems to be one of those enduring incumbents who can hang on (albeit barely) to a very marginal seat, similar to Leon Bignell who holds the state seat of Mawson.

Walter-Taylor also overlaps significantly with Maiwar. So I figure that perhaps LNP consider having a presence in both Paddington and Walter-Taylor is important to remaining viable within Maiwar. Making this ad-spend simultaneously a play as part of the council election and the state election. A pretty standard attempt to get the most bang for their buck out of a limited budget.

Remember that the Lord Mayor also has a vote, so if Schrinner retains the mayoralty, 13 ward seats would still give the LNP majority control of the chamber. They’d have to lose 7 wards to fall into minority. This is possible, but it would require the Greens to win most of the contests they’re competitive in, Labor to win at least two marginals and perhaps a surprise result somewhere. I think that’s unlikely given a few commenters have said Labor aren’t really taking this election that seriously, presumably to save resources for the state election.

Yeah, agree with you Wilson that I forgot being a local council the mayor has a normal (deliberative) vote rather than a casting vote which is the case for the Speaker/presiding officer of a state legislative chamber.

Realistically, I think 5 seats is about the most the LNP is likely to lose with the probable outcome being a loss of just 3-4 seats leaving the LNP with a secure majority.

Agree @Yoh An, I think the most probable outcome for LNP against ALP is a two seat loss (Northgate & Calamvale) and a third loss (maybe something like Runcorn) if they have a surprisingly bad night.

Against Greens I think the most probably outcome is a two seat loss to the Greens, with Walter-Taylor, Paddington, Ennogera, Central, Coorparoo and Holland Park all being in realistic contention. Factors like optional-preferential voting will benefit LNP and hurt preference flows to the Greens – which they will rely upon strongly.

Got some election fluff in the mail today from both Labor and the Libs, both of the flyers amusingly enough for the wrong ward. The LNP’s message is basically white noise with an inane ‘chaotic Greens/Labor alliance with a radical agenda’ scare campaign (and some more bullshit about 30km/h speed limits on most roads). Labor’s material is similarly beige, but (as far as i can tell) doesn’t contain any demonstrable misinformation and doesn’t mention the Greens at all. Labor is promising to halve bus fares though. That’s about as ‘radical’ as you can reasonably expect from them.

Greens just announced a plan to rebuild Brisbane’s tram network. The first track proposed track would start from Garden City in Mount Gravatt and run west through Moorooka and Annerley, turn north and head towards fortitude valley, then east to terminate at hamilton (with stops along the way). A few days ago they announced that buses and citycats would be free (which honestly I should have seen coming) and I assume this service would be free too. So I take back what I said about their transport policy not being ambitious enough. They’ve got a very comprehensive plan for transport reform, or at least the start of it. Of course you can have all the best policies in the world and it won’t matter if nobody knows about them.

It’s debatable whether a tram line represents better value for money than bus lanes along the same route, but the Greens already put out a bus lanes policy some time back and this allows them to get more interest than another bus lane policy would have. In an election period, it’s sometimes more important to have an exciting, costly policy than a cheaper but less interesting one.

The wards that this tram line would affect the most, Hamilton and Moorooka, seem to be pretty safe major party seats and unlikely to change hands this election. Perhaps they’re part of a long-term strategy.

It should be highlighted that the proposed changes to the bus system are policies ready to go, whereas the tram policy is just to pay for some research into whether it could be done/how much it would cost. Definitely a long-term thing.

About a month out from election day and the parties’ campaign strategies are now all pretty clear. The LNP are doing very little media work other than releasing a few ad spots. They’re doing very few interviews and community engagement other than with their friends in the courier mail, the brisbane times, channel 7 etc. The ads are either spotlighting the ward candidates they seem concerned with (padddington, walter taylor, enoggera, northgate etc) or they’re just pure attack ads. The attack ads mostly take the form of attacking Jonathan Sriranganathan as a radical, an anarchist, a criminal etc and indirectly tying Tracey Price to him as part of the COALITION OF CHAOS (which is the same line Jeremy Rockliff is using in Tasmania, for what that’s worth). The few attack ads aimed at Tracey Price are almost all about the supposed CRIME WAVE, something as most of you know the council has very little policy control over anyway. What I deduce from that is this: the LNP seems to think they’re on track to win, but it’s relatively precarious, and the way they think they stay winning is by talking as little about what council’s actually doing as possible, talking as little about their opponents’ policies as possible, especially Labors’, and instead distract voters with their generic racist state politics playbook. The reason they seem to be going after Jonathan Sriranganthan personally most of all might be because they think the Greens are the main threat, such as it is, or it could just be that Tracey Price and Labor don’t have any sort of policy or general notoriety they can make a coherent attack line out of. It could be either or both.

Labor have finally started to show a modicum of interest in the election. They’ve purchased some ad spots on social media but I can’t for the life of me remember what they even said. I think they may be focusing their efforts on their outer suburban candidates. I don’t remember seeing anything at all for Enoggera or Holland Park, or even Northgate or Marchant for example, but this is as anecdotal as anecdotal observations get so feel free to correct me.

Neither party has publicized any internal polling as far as I can tell. The Greens claim not to have been able to afford any. I fully believe that. They’ve fallen well short of their fundraising goals last I saw. The question is why the other two won’t talk about it.

In Labor’s case I suspect it’s because it’s mostly bad news. But how bad is ‘bad’? It could be that they’re doing really, *really* bad, but if they were set to pick up a few wards without winning majority, which is probably realistically their best possible outcome, then it probably doesn’t help to publicize that too much either given they’ve ruled out ‘doing any deals’ with the greens.

For the Libs, I’m not so sure. If they do indeed think they’re winning by a marginal amount, then they gain nothing by provoking any curiosity whatsoever in what’s gotten voters so jazzed about their opponents. If they’re actually *losing*, then doubly so. But if they’re winning by a lot then I’m not sure. I suppose it benefits them broadly to encourage the general atmosphere of inevitability rather than putting numbers on it, whatever the case.

This is all a very long winded way of me saying that I don’t think much has changed. The LNP look set to retake council, albeit with a reduced margin. I’m convinced the real story of the night will be the Mayoral race. Odds are Adrian Schrinner returns, but how easily? What will the primary votes of the Labor and Greens candidates look like? How much did their refusal to direct preferences contribute to it?

Channel 7 is reporting that Labor will now direct their preferences to the Greens in the BCC election. Back in November Labor were insisting that they were going to run a ‘Just vote 1’ campaign and not direct preferences at all.

Game changing? Maybe. The Just Vote 1 thing was unbelievably cynical, could never have delivered a change in government, and indicated that Labor’s primary motivation for this election was to stop the Greens winning any seats. Now it seems like Labor’s thinking they could potentially unseat the LNP, either in the wards, in the mayoralty or both- and that they actually want to.

Interesting, though I guess that was probably the expected outcome, as it would have been a pretty unusual decision for Labor to not direct preferences to the Greens, especially somewhere like BCC where there is a much higher Green vote in many competitive seats, so preference leakage really matters. If Labor are really keen to win or think they are on track to do well, I would think they will pull out the old “vote Green get Liberal” stuff they used in Balmain (where it didn’t seem to work too badly) and similar versions they have used in Ryan, Brisbane, Griffith etc. They haven’t started doing that yet to my knowledge, so I’m yet to be convinced Labor are taking all this too seriously.

I’m interested to see how much of an effect the LNP attacks on Jonathan Srianganthan will have, who they will benefit or whether they’ll have much effect at all. There is precedent that lines like “defund the police”, being soft on crime (variations of which seem to be on LNP ads attacking the Greens) or basically being seen to be too left-wing can cause progressive candidates a lot of trouble – see Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Mandela Barnes recently in the US.

I’ve started thinking that these attacks on Srianganthan may end up helping Labor, who appear as the sensible middle-path alternative to the LNP and the “extremist” (portrayed) Greens. However, another theory is that these attacks won’t have much effect on the Greens, as many voters won’t really care. After all, these portrayals of Sriangathan as an extremist anarchist are hardly earth-shattering or new, and anyone likely to vote for him probably is somewhat aware anyway but may think other issues such as the LNP’s record are more important.

Tallyroom readers might be interested in a little tool I have put together to simulate the ward results http://jokevinegar.org/bne-council-map/

If the Greens pick up a few wards, there may not be any party with a council majority. I’m not sure how any of the mayoral candidates would handle such a situation, and Tracey Price particularly has been keen to hose down any speculation about power-sharing.

Can anyione give me feed back on the 2 independents, Tanti and Holmes. Been googling can not seem to find any information on there views or policies. Thanks

Was wondering the same thing. I noticed Labor put Sriranganathan at number 2 on their HTVs. Seems despite his crackpot reputation amongst traditional politicians he’s at least considered less of a crackpot, even against the Legalise Cannabis candidate.

Here’s an interview with Bruce Tanti. Not surprising I suppose but he doesn’t seem to have a clue what he’s doing.

The Australian published an article on Friday, which said that internal Greens polling suggests that they’re on track to win Paddington and Walter Taylor, and close in Central, Coorparoo and Enoggera. Winning all of them in addition to retaining the Gabba would give the Greens 5 wards to Labor’s 6. However, the article also states that Labor are confident of winning Northgate and Calamvale, which would give them 7 wards and preserve their status as the official opposition.

If all of these gains happened while Schrinner retains the mayoralty , this would create a hung council chamber, with the Greens and Labor having 13 wards between them and the LNP having 12 wards plus the mayoralty for a total of 13 votes in the chamber. The independent Nicole Johnston would hold the balance of power.

I’ve heard the LNP are sending out bulk texts in multiple wards attacking the Greens and Labor, as well as embarking on a mail advertising blitz of similar attack ads. It seems they’ve also spent over $200 000 on digital advertising in the last couple of days.

Now sure, anyone with a big war chest can engage in a lot of advertising, but the LNP have an incentive to save money for the state election, where they’re the challengers rather than the incumbents and can’t rely as much on name recognition.

Between the big late spend and the repeated attack ads, these seem like the actions of a party that is worried and trying to stave off projected losses. Could their internal polling be looking gloomy for them?

Agree Wilson, a party typically runs attack ads frequently when they are in the defensive position trying to hang onto as many ‘at risk’ marginals as possible, often when facing a potential wipeout result.

If the LNP was in a stronger position, they would be running more positive ads emphasising their track record.

Overall, I think there are 10 LNP wards at some risk of being lost (Paddington, Walter Taylor, Coorparoo, Calamvale, Enoggera, Northgate, Central, Marchant, Holland Park and Doboy). Out of these, the first two are where the LNP is a definite underdog with only appointed incumbents to defend them. The next three are considered the true ‘toss-up’ contests and I expect the LNP to lose two of them (most likely Coorparoo and Calamvale).

Out of the remaining five, I don’t believe the LNP would be able to hang onto them all and at least one will be lost.

The problem is that the LNP have so many marginal wards/seats (9 out of the 10 key targets listed above are held by margins under 5%), so it only takes just a small swing for them to lose their majority.

The Brisbane Channel did an interview with Gilbert Holmes too btw. If any of you can make sense of what he’s saying you’re welcome to speculate on how he’ll factor into the race. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BKgz9SERfE

I think Adam Allan should be able to hold in Northgate since I can’t see Labor gaining any wards this time.

Anyone in Brisbane on 16 March? If I can I’ll be at the LNP’s after-party.

Schrinner should be able to hold on and remain Lord Mayor. But it’s possible that the Greens might make the TCP count instead of Labor and they’ll win more wards than Labor. The LNP will hold onto its majority of wards, but may lose a few to the Greens.

Nether Portal I will be but probably won’t see you because I’ll be at the Greens after party lol.

Am curious if Albo will come down this week to campaign with Tracy Price and Brisbane Labor. A visit will tell us that BCC Labor think they have good chances of making a splash (however that is measured).

apparently Adrian Schrinner’s come out against preferential voting now. His primary vote must be in the fucking toilet.

It is very depressing to see candidates, primarily conservatives, attack our fantastic electoral system.

@Cyrus Which one? There are three separate voting systems at Local Government elections and various permutations within those.

Brisbane has divided wards, full mayoral vote, optional preferential;
Mackay has an undivided council, full mayoral vote, first-past-the-post but you can number as many squares as you like for Councillors but only one for Mayor;
Ipswich has a unique two-member division with no preference distribution and a combined vote for Mayor. It was literally the only way to design the system so Paul Tully could be elected.

Additional some Councils have full postal, some have attendance voting and two Councils (Maranoa and Isaac) have hybrid voting where some parts of the electorate are full postal and some are attendance.

I don’t really care which system is used – I just don’t want to have to learn a new one every time I move.

“Fantastic electoral system” is a mighty big stretch when it comes to the City of Brisbane.

Come on, look around the world, many democracies have electoral systems which are light years behind Australia’s.

Like the ol’ Biden quote, “don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.”

Obviously there are issues with the BCC election and improvements that can be made. But we are so far beyond first past the post, we have the AEC which does a fantastic job with redistricting. I think it’s more than reasonable to be greatful for our electoral system.

@Ben Raue Two slight additions Ben.
“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.”
A substantial part of that was due to the 2019 BCC redistribution. From memory there were 3 wards that were out of quota, but the Independent Change Commission decided to make changes in just about all of them. The redistribution followed the ALP’s submission a lot closer than it did the LNP’s.

““Fantastic electoral system” is a mighty big stretch when it comes to the City of Brisbane.”
Well yeah, but it’s not the Council’s fault – or their choice. Councils may make recommendations to changes to their electoral systems when asked by the ECQ. The ECQ went through a round of asking random Councils whether they wanted to be divided or undivided and then being “guided” by Council’s view. The cynic in me saw the decision based on whether Councils confirmed what the ECQ, the ICC and the Government had already formed a view on. So Brisbane has no real say on how the system works – which is what happened with the bouncing between Councillors electing the Mayor (much how the PM is selected) and a popularly elected Mayor.

Sriranganathan has no chance if the Greens are running dead outside their target wards. Having one volunteer and no staff at pre poll suggests that.

There’s some debate over where efforts are best placed – campaigning well in natural Greens territory does have a “magnifier effect” for wider races and there is actually value in running up the score in the Gabba. There are parts of QLD where a good campaign gets you 5% and a paper candidate gets 3%. But getting 15% instead of 10% in a typical non target ward seems to be worth it.

One volunteer and no *signs*

Which ward? There are definitely wards where the Greens are running dead and the target ward seem to be getting the most resources on pre-poll for the obvious reasons, but from what I’ve seen it isn’t all-or-nothing.

“But we are so far beyond first past the post, we have the AEC which does a fantastic job with redistricting.”

You’re showing a remarkable lack of understanding of voting systems beyond the anglosphere. The fact that we have single-member electorates is a far more significant factor than whether we use preferences. The question of majoritarianism versus proportionalism is the biggest dividing line in electoral systems around the world and on that metric urban SEQ councils are absolutely majoritarian.

We literally have proportional council elections in NSW, Tasmania and to a lesser extent South Australia, and of course we have PR elections for the ACT. Comparing the BCC to them is not comparing to the “almightly”, but a sensible comparison.

“Well yeah, but it’s not the Council’s fault – or their choice.”

I don’t see how this is relevant – I’m not blaming the BCC for their electoral system, just pointing out that it’s a bad one – but for the record the Local Government Association in QLD was a big factor in stopping the shift from OPV to CPV (which would have been a minor improvement) and from bloc vote to PR in undivided councils (which would have been a big improvement), so councils cannot escape the blame. Councils are always defenders of the electoral system status quo.

Mark, when I say “gained swings”, those swings would be calculated based on post-redistribution margin calculations. But also, since they gained swings almost everywhere, I don’t know how the redistribution is relevant.

There is, however, a problem in that absent votes cast in the wrong ward in 2020 were transferred to the correct ward for the council election, but for the mayoral election they were simply counted in place. So a decent number of mayoral votes are credited to the wrong ward.

@Babalumba referencing a comment on another thread of a voter voting in MacGregor Ward

I mean, I am visiting this site, engaging in discussions, I listen to your podcast, I create models to share with other commenters and I’m heavily interested in electoral dynamics.

If you think I’m “showing a remarkable lack of understanding of voting systems”, well yes, maybe to you Ben.

You have to consider that these systems need to be enacted by politicians who are elected by the public who care about electoral systems magnitudally less than I do.

While you might aspire of achieve near perfect electoral systems (an aspiration we share, just so you know) I think it’s totally fair to stop, take a moment and smell the bloody roses. Because our electoral system is one of the strongest in the developed world.

There are many countries in the developed world that don’t use single-member electorates to elect their representatives. Most of them have better electoral systems than we do.

If you limit your scope to the USA, UK and Canada then yes we look good. But that would be a silly way to limit your scope.

And within Australia, many institutions include some element of proportional representation, including the other five state parliaments, the ACT Assembly and the federal parliament, as well as councils in every other state. Only the Queensland Parliament, the NT Legislative Assembly and Queensland councils are completely devoid of PR. So even limiting your focus to Australia, BCC doesn’t perform very well.

And I don’t see why the difficulty in changing electoral systems is relevant to us assessing the relative merits of a system.

I’m in strong agreement with Ben Raue, especially with many councils in QLD using the absolutely atrocious Block Voting! There is no need to unduly praise QLD local politics where there is much need for an overhaul.

In fact there almost was an overhaul before the 2020 council elections (which would have replaced OPV with CPV and replaced Block Voting with STV), alas the Labor government’s movement in that direction faced some opposition and not enough support and relegated it to the backburner and haven’t yet tried again.