Lord Mayor of Brisbane

The Lord Mayor of Brisbane is the chief executive of the City of Brisbane, the capital of the Australian state of Queensland, and the head of the Brisbane City Council. Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner of the Liberal National Party was sworn in on 8 April 2019, following the resignation of Graham Quirk.

The Lord Mayor serves a four-year term running concurrently with that of the City Council, and is elected by optional preferential voting. As Brisbane is by far the largest local government area in Australia, the Lord Mayor is elected by the largest single-member electorate in the Commonwealth.

Like all mayors in Queensland, the Lord Mayor has broad executive powers and additional civic and ceremonial duties. The Lord Mayor is responsible for policy development, implementing policies enacted by the council, leading and controlling the business of council, preparing the budget and directing the chief executive and senior managers. The Lord Mayor also chairs the council's Civic Cabinet and is an ex officio member of all council committees.

Mayors of the Brisbane Municipal Council (1859–1903)
The Town of Brisbane, established in 1859, was led by a mayor.

Mayors of the Brisbane City Council (1903–1925)
The City of Brisbane, established in 1903, replaced the Town of Brisbane and was led by a mayor.

Lord Mayors of the Brisbane City Council
The new City of Brisbane, established in 1925, replaced the former City of Brisbane and is led by the Lord Mayor.

Historical party names
Prior to 1976, conservative councillors stood on a variety of different platforms: the United Party, Nationalist Citizens Party, Civic Reform League, the Citizens' Municipal Organisation, the Liberal Civic Party and the Brisbane Civic Party.

The United Party and its successor the Nationalist Citizens Party were created as the vehicle for conservative candidates to campaign against Labor candidates in the newly formed Brisbane City Council, without formally acknowledging their links to the main conservative party of the time. The Nationalist Citizens Party was doomed when the very conservative Civic Reform League was created on 12 December 1930. That saw most of the conservative councillors from the Nationalist Citizens Party, led by Acting Mayor Watson, defect to the Civic Reform League, which failed to win the subsequent elections. The Progress Party was created at the same time and, in the 1931 election, saw only three of its candidates win, including John Greene, who became Lord Mayor as a compromise candidate amongst the 20 alderman.

The Citizens' Municipal Organisation (CMO) was ostensibly a non-partisan grouping, but was informally aligned with the United Australian Party and then, after 1944, the newly formed Liberal Party. The CMO was formed on 23 June 1936 and was the platform for the election campaigns of Sir John Chandler and Sir Reg Groom. Finally, in the 1976 election, the Liberal Party began to contest Brisbane municipal elections under its own name.