Brisbane City Council Totally Explained

Everything about Brisbane City Council totally explained

Brisbane City Council is the governing council for Brisbane, which is the capital of Queensland, Australia. Unlike councils in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, where the local councils are generally responsible for relatively small areas of those cities, Brisbane City Council administers the larger part of the Brisbane metropolitan area and has a larger population than any other Local Government Area in Australia.
The Council is the combination of the local cities, towns and shires that merged together in 1924 (see history section). The main offices and Central Library for the Council are at 266 George Street also known as Brisbane Square. The Brisbane City Hall houses the Council Chamber, the offices of the Lord Mayor and Deputy Mayor, the Council Chamber, meeting and reception rooms and the Museum of Brisbane.

History

Brisbane City Council was formed by the Queensland State Government in 1925 by amalgamating twenty smaller councils. These councils were:

Cities:
- Brisbane
- South Brisbane

Towns:

Shires:

The City Council also took over the responsibilities for several quasi-autonomous government authorities, for example the Brisbane Tramways Trust.

Structure

Brisbane City Council has an unusual structure with power divided between a powerful executive Lord Mayor, a parliamentary-style council of twenty-six councillors representing single-member wards of approximately 23,000 voters, and a Civic Cabinet comprising the Lord Mayor and the chairpersons of the seven standing committees drawn from the membership of Council. The seven standing committees are:

Community Services Committee

Environment and Sustainability Committee

Finance Committee

Public Transport Committee

Roads, TransApex and Traffic Committee

Urban Planning and Economic Development Committee

Water and City Businesses Committee The council also owns three business units which are city-owned enterprises managed on commercial lines:

Brisbane CityWorks

Brisbane Transport

Brisbane Water Brisbane City Council also used to own the QEII Stadium (also known as ANZ Stadium, home of the 1982 Commonwealth Games), before it was handed over to the Queensland Government's Major Sporting Facility Authority (MSFA), which operates Suncorp Stadium, the Gabba, Dairy Farmers Stadium, ANZ Stadium and the Gold Coast's Skilled Park Stadium at Robina.
   Following Local Government elections on March 15, 2008, 10 councillors are members of the Australian Labor Party while 16 councillors and the Lord Mayor are from the Liberal Party. The current Lord Mayor of Brisbane is former civil engineer Campbell Newman who belongs to the Liberal Party and who is only the second Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane. The current Deputy Lord Mayor is [GrahamQuirk], who belongs to the Liberal Party. The day-to-day management of Council's operations is the responsibility of the Chief Executive Officer who is currently Jude Munro. Elections are held every four years with ballots for the Lord Mayoralty and the individual councillors being held simultaneously. Voting is compulsory for all eligible electors. The election in March 2004 resulted in the unusual situation of a Liberal Lord Mayor co-existing with a Labor majority on Council, resulting in remarkably few conflicts over civic budgets and Council policy. The most recent election in March 2008 saw a swing of 5.5 % to the Liberal Party on the councillor votes, resulting in a Liberal majority on Council with a Liberal Lord Mayor (Lord Mayor Campbell Newman won re-election with 60 % of the primary vote).
   The Brisbane City Council and its unique structure is incorporated under the City of Brisbane Act 1924, while other local governments in Queensland are bound by the Local Government Act 1993.
   Council meetings are held at Brisbane City Hall every Tuesday at 2pm except during recess and holiday periods. Meetings are generally open to the public.
   Brisbane City Council aims to be carbon neutral by 2026 via the reduction of emissions and carbon offsetting.

Heraldry

The motto of Brisbane City Council is Meliora sequimur, Latin for We aim for better things. Its corporate slogan is Dedicated to a better Brisbane. The city's colours are blue and gold. Its corporate logo was introduced in 1982 in preparation for the Commonwealth Games hosted in Brisbane that year. It features a stylised version of Brisbane's City Hall which opened in 1930. The city's floral emblem is the poinsettia and its faunal emblem is the Graceful Tree Frog.

Wards

As of 2008-04-06, the twenty-six wards, their councillors and their party affiliations are:

Ward	Councillor	Party
Bracken Ridge	Amanda Cooper	Liberal
Central	David Hinchliffe	Labor
Chandler	Adrian Schrinner	Liberal
Deagon	Victoria Newton	Labor
Doboy	John H. Campbell	Labor
Enoggera	Andrew Wines	Liberal
Hamilton	David McLachlan	Liberal
Holland Park	Ian McKenzie	Liberal
Jamboree	Matthew Bourke	Liberal
Karawatha	Gail MacPherson	Labor
Macgregor	Graham Quirk	Liberal
Marchant	Fiona King	Liberal
McDowall	Norm Wyndham	Liberal
Moorooka	Steve Griffiths	Labor
Morningside	Shayne Sutton	Labor
Northgate	Kim Flesser	Labor
Parkinson	Angela Owen-Taylor	Liberal
Pullenvale	Margaret de Wit	Liberal
Richlands	Milton Dick	Labor
Tennyson	Nicole Johnston	Liberal
The Gabba	Helen Abrahams	Labor
The Gap	Geraldine Knapp	Liberal
Toowong	Peter Matic	Liberal
Walter Taylor	Jane Prentice	Liberal
Wishart	Krista Adams	Liberal
Wynnum Manly	Peter Cumming	Labor

Sister cities

Brisbane has seven sister cities. They are:

Kobe, Japan (July 1985)

Auckland, New Zealand (August 1988)

Shenzhen, People's Republic of China (June 1992)

Semarang, Indonesia (January 1993)

Kaohsiung, Taiwan (September 1997)

Daejeon, South Korea (June 2002)

Chongqing, People's Republic of China (October 2005) In 1995, Brisbane City Council officially severed all ties with its sister city, Nice, France, in protest against the Chirac government's decision to resume nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean. Brisbane doesn't have any sister city relationship with any North American, South American, African or European city.

Further Information

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