Peter Cumming elected Labor leader in Brisbane City Council

The Labor Party has backed a 22-year Brisbane City Council veteran to lead it out of the local electoral wilderness with the selection of Wynnum Manly councillor Peter Cumming as its new leader.

Cr Cumming, who won his ward with a primary vote of more than 55 per cent, was one of just five Labor councillors left standing after Lord Mayor Graham Quirk's Liberal National Party convincing win at last month's council election.

Councillor Peter Cumming, leader of the Labor opposition in Brisbane City Council.

The Quirk-led LNP won 19 of Brisbane's 26 wards, increasing its majority by one.

Cr Cumming, who was elected to the council in 1994, will lead Labor in the council chamber for the first time next week.

Fairfax Media understands Cr Cumming put his hand up at a caucus meeting just before Easter and, as he was the only nominee, he was elected unopposed.

Former Labor leader Shayne Sutton, the councillor for Morningside, and Deagon councillor Jared Cassidy had been tipped by party insiders as possible leaders, but neither put their name forward.

Cr Cumming said Labor's aim for the next four years would be to keep the Quirk administration accountable.

"This will mean exposing cost overruns, deals with mates and donors and highlighting election promises not met," he said.

"We may only have five members, but we will be punching above our weight.

"We will give disaffected residents and groups of residents a fair hearing and assist them in getting an airing of their grievances.

"We will be supportive of good policy and good budgetary decisions but critical of bad policy and wastage of ratepayers funds.

"We will be keeping a very close eye on the proposed Brisbane Metro subway system which we thought was inferior to Rod Harding's light rail proposal.

"However, we acknowledge the Lord Mayor and the administration have a mandate to introduce the Brisbane Metro, if it stacks up.

"Only time will tell if that is the case."

As the leader of just five councillors, Cr Cumming said he had no illusion about the challenges he would face as leader.

"Oh look, it'll be tough," he said.

"It was tough enough last time when we had two more councillors in our team, so it'll be tough but we're determined to give people a say if they're disaffected with the administration."

While Cr Cumming said the election result was not a good one for Labor, but there were some bright points.

"If it hadn't been for the loss of the two wards, the reduction in margins of the LNP councillors was quite a reasonable result," he said.

"I think there's around about six wards with margins of less than 5 per cent now and another four, I think it is, with less than 10 per cent to the LNP.

"If we have a good candidate and a good campaign (in 2020), we're a chance to substantially reduce the margin and even get a majority.

"So there are some bright patches, but they're overwhelmed by the loss of the two wards, which was really poor unfortunately."

Labor lost two wards following the retirements of councillors Helen Abrahams (The Gabba) and Kim Flesser (Northgate) at the election.

The Greens' Jonathan Sri took The Gabba, while the Liberal National Party's Adam Allan will be sworn in next week as Northgate's new councillor.

A spokesman for Cr Quirk said council committee chairs would be announced "in the next couple of days", although a wide-ranging reshuffle was not expected.

Chandler councillor Adrian Schrinner was expected to be re-elected unopposed as deputy mayor.

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NOTE: This article was updated on Monday night to include comment from Cr Cumming.