Five wards to watch this Brisbane City Council election

If your idea of a fun Saturday night is watching election returns, get a life. But for those of us who just can’t help ourselves, this weekend’s Brisbane City Council election offers some intriguing match-ups.

Not surprisingly, it’s the three main lord mayoral candidates – Adrian Schrinner (LNP), Tracey Price (Labor) and Jonathan Sriranganathan (Greens) – who have attracted the most attention.

Brisbane City Council has 26 wards.Credit: Nathan Perri

However, it’s the suburban battles for City Hall’s 26 wards that are most intriguing.

For all the “coalition of chaos” nonsense being peddled by the LNP this campaign, there’s every chance Schrinner could be returned with a hostile council chamber – something Campbell Newman had to deal with for the first four years of his lord mayoralty.

Last time around, the LNP won a very handy majority in the chamber, but that didn’t tell the whole story of the 2020 election. Scratch under the surface, and you’ll see the Schrinner administration is in a much more perilous state than it was this time last election cycle.

Without the popular Graham Quirk at the helm, the LNP suffered a swing of 3.9 per cent across the wards, and a swing of 5.1 per cent against the lord mayor. Previously safe LNP wards became marginal. Similar swings this year would be disastrous for the conservative party.

With that in mind, what follows are five wards to watch on election night, all for different reasons – and not necessarily the likelihood (or not) of them changing hands.

It’s not about predicting winners – that’s a mug’s game (though I reckon Deagon’s a pretty safe bet for Labor) – rather, this is about trends to watch for in the context of future electoral contests, not least of which is the October 26 state poll.

As luck would have it, all five have just three candidates running, from the LNP, Labor and the Greens. Also – and I realised this only after selecting the five wards – of the 15 candidates below, only one is a man.

Paddington

• Held by: Clare Jenkinson (LNP)
• Margin: 0.7 per cent
• Swing at last election: 5.1 per cent swing to Greens
• Challengers: Seal Chong Wah (Greens); Sun Etheridge (Labor)
• Why is Paddington one to watch? It’s the most likely to turn green.

I said I wasn’t going to make predictions, but right off the bat I’m going to make an exception.

The Greens will win Paddington.

They came damn close in 2020, when incumbent LNP councillor Peter Matic only held on by a razor-thin margin of 0.7 per cent.

Matic got 45.7 per cent of the primary vote, with the Greens not far behind on 38 per cent. With Labor well in the rear, with just 16.4 per cent, this is a contest between the LNP and the Greens.

In 2016, the Greens’ primary vote was 27.3 per cent, so they’ve certainly been on an upward trajectory in Paddington.

Add to the mix the loss of Matic – never underestimate the strength of incumbency and name recognition in a campaign – and the fact a fair proportion of Paddington has a federal Greens member in Stephen Bates, then it’s more likely than not the seat will switch from blue to green.

Make sure you let me know how much of an idiot I am on Sunday morning should this prediction not eventuate. My email is at the bottom of this page – just put “You mug!” in the subject header.

Calamvale

• Held by: Angela Owen (LNP)
• Margin: 2.2 per cent
• Swing at last election: 12.1 per cent to Labor
• Challengers: Andrea Wildin (Greens); Emily Kim (Labor)
• Why is Calamvale one to watch? The biggest swing against the LNP was here in 2020, and if the trend continues Calamvale will likely fall to Labor.

Calamvale went from a safe LNP ward in 2016 to within a whisker of falling to Labor in 2022.

Between those elections, LNP incumbent Angela Owen’s primary vote collapsed from a comfortable 59.7 to 48.3 per cent. At the same time, Labor’s stock rose from 30.3 to 41.9 per cent.

This time around, Labor has selected a real rising star of the party – Queensland Young Labor president Emily Kim.

With Owen trying for a fifth term in City Hall, having previously represented the now-defunct Parkinson ward prior to a redistribution, incumbency could prove a double-edged sword.

If there is a mood for change after 20 years of LNP rule in Brisbane City Council it will be felt in Calamvale.

(It will have been 20 years since Campbell Newman’s election as lord mayor, but there was a Labor majority in City Hall for his first term. The LNP has had the numbers in the chamber for 16 years, since 2008.)

Enoggera

• Held by: Andrew Wines (LNP)
• Margin: 1.8 per cent
• Swing at last election: 3.2 per cent to Labor
• Challengers: Taylar Wojtasik (Labor); Quintessa Denniz (Greens)
• Why is Enoggera one to watch? If the Schrinner administration is in trouble in the suburbs, this will be a canary in the coalmine.

Similar to Calamvale, Enoggera is represented by a long-term incumbent and, like Calamvale, has been swinging away from the LNP in recent elections.

First elected in 2008, council infrastructure chair Andrew Wines saw his primary vote fall from 49.6 to 45.1 per cent between 2016 and 2022.

If all Greens voters directed preferences to Labor in the last election, Jonty Bush would today be the councillor for Enoggera. Instead, she is now the state member for Cooper.

Wines could well get over the line come Sunday morning, but not before a nervous Saturday night.

The Gabba

• Held by: Trina Massey (Greens)
• Margin: 12.3 per cent
• Swing at last election: 5.3 per cent to Greens
• Challengers: Bec Mac (Labor); Laura Wong (LNP)
• Why is The Gabba one to watch? The Gabba is the epicentre of Greens power in Brisbane, with all levels of government being held by the party. This will be a litmus test.

The Gabba has been at the heart of the Greensland revolution since Labor stalwart Helen Abrahams retired, paving the way for Jonathan Sri – Sriranganathan still went by his shortened name back then – to become the first Greens candidate to win a local election in Queensland.

(Senator Larissa Waters was elected in 2010 through the Senate’s statewide proportional representation voting system, while former Greens MP Ronan Lee defected to the party after he was elected under the Labor banner.)

The Gabba ward overlaps with the state seat of South Brisbane, held by the Greens’ Amy MacMahon, and the federal seat of Griffith, which Max Chandler-Mather wrested from Labor’s Terri Butler to claim victory for the Greens in the 2022 election.

Losing the locally popular Sriranganathan could normally be expected to dampen Green hopes in The Gabba, but as lord mayoral candidate, he will still be able to drive votes for the party.

Any change in the Greens’ vote – up or down – will be watched closely at Labor headquarters in Peel Street (itself within the ward boundaries), as the left-of-centre party continues to deal with the emergent Green vote.

Morningside

• Held by: Lucy Collier (Labor)
• Margin: 9.7 per cent
• Swing at last election: 3.8 per cent to Labor
• Challengers: Linda Barry (Greens); Allie Griffin (LNP)
• Why is this one to watch? State ramifications...

While The Gabba will show if the Greens have maintained their stronghold, Morningside will be an early indication for Premier Steven Miles and his state Labor team about whether they face an existential crisis in the inner suburbs of Brisbane.

Labor’s Kara Cook handily led the primary vote with 47.9 per cent in 2020, building on predecessor Shayne Sutton’s 48.8 per cent in 2016.

So Lucy Collier, Labor’s newly appointed councillor after Cook’s retirement last year, has a pretty solid voter base.

But if there are signs of that vote shedding to the Greens in 2024 – even if it is not enough to lose the ward – alarm bells will be ringing for Labor.

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