Jonathan Sriranganathan is back as the Greens’ candidate for Brisbane mayor
He is Brisbane’s most colourful politician, figuratively and literally.
And at times he is the most polarising, as willing to take part in peaceful protest as he is to pursue policy or perform poetry.
Now, Jonathan Sriranganathan, the city’s first Greens councillor, wants to be its first Greens mayor.
Jonathan Sriranganathan will be the Greens’ mayoral candidate for the Brisbane City Council election in March 2024.Credit: Felicity Caldwell
Fewer than five months ago, Sriranganathan resigned from The Gabba ward he held since 2016, handing the reins to the Greens’ Trina Massey, and on Wednesday he will announce he is the party’s candidate for mayor at next year’s council election.
Sriranganathan was coy about his future ambitions when announcing he would stand down, but admitted he had been thinking about the mayoralty – and was asked to run.
But he said he only “firmed up on that decision” after a couple of months off, during which time he visited his father’s old village in Sri Lanka, travelled around south-east Queensland in a campervan, and played with his bands, Rivermouth and Obscure Orchestra.
Sriranganathan will face a tough fight to unseat LNP mayor Adrian Schrinner, who was first elected as a councillor in 2005 and now occupies the highest office in mainland Australia held by a Liberal.
The LNP will have held the mayoralty for 20 years by the 2024 election, and although Greens candidate Kath Angus achieved a 5 per cent swing in 2020, Schrinner still won 56 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
But Sriranganathan said he believed he could win.
“I do, actually,” he said.
“I think, honestly, it will be a long shot.
“We’re not exactly the favourite to win, but the Greens vote has been growing dramatically in Brisbane in the past few years.”
After Sriranganathan won his spot in City Hall, Michael Berkman and Amy MacMahon were elected to state parliament, and Senator Penny Allman-Payne and federal MPs Elizabeth Watson-Brown, Max Chandler-Mather and Stephen Bates have joined the ranks of Queensland Greens federally.
In Brisbane council, the LNP holds 19 wards, Labor has five, the Greens one, and there is one independent.
Asked how he could work with an LNP-dominated council, Sriranganathan said “realistically”, if he became mayor, the Greens would also win eight to 10 wards, but he planned to work across party lines.
Reacting to the announcement, a spokeswoman for Schrinner said residents had a “choice between stability or a destructive Green/ Labor coalition of chaos at the next election”.
Labor Councillor Jared Cassidy gave a response that did not mention Sriranganathan, instead complaining “it’s telling that all Schrinner and the LNP have got left is political attacks”, and going on to say the LNP had left Brisbane congested, with rising rates.
In 2019, when lord mayor Graham Quirk announced his retirement within 12 months of the council election – meaning the LNP could choose a replacement without a byelection – Sriranganathan lamented it was “robbing Brisbane residents of their say”.
But when asked about handing The Gabba to a Greens successor, Sriranganathan said he did not have a huge amount of structural power as a councillor.
“Handing over the ward to Trina isn’t really like handing over control of the entire city,” he said.
LNP councillors David McLachlan and Peter Matic, as well as Labor’s Peter Cumming and Kara Cook, also announced they will not contest next year’s election, enabling their parties to choose replacements.
Sriranganathan’s vision for Brisbane involves tackling housing issues, decentralising power to give residents a greater say, free and frequent public transport, celebrating green spaces, and better connected pedestrian routes and bikeways.
“I see reducing car dependence in Brisbane as one of the most important steps we can take as a city in terms of climate action,” he said.
“A huge part of Brisbane’s fossil fuel consumption footprint is the fact that so many of us are forced to drive as our main mode of transport because the alternatives are so crappy.”
Sriranganathan on his house boat.
Options for improving cycling included lowering speed limits in the CBD, and connecting missing bikeway links.
“In some cases, on a few corridors, it will probably involve taking away a few parking bays so we can create new bike lanes. We’ve seen that rolled out pretty successfully on Elizabeth Street in the city,” he said.
Sriranganathan, known for his activism, said he would use the role of mayor to advocate for change, including pressuring state and federal governments, even if he scored the top job in City Hall and essentially became the establishment.
“But I hasten to emphasise that whenever I get involved in any activism or protests, it’s because we’ve already exhausted all other methods,” he said.
There is no avenue to contest a ward if a candidate fails to become mayor – meaning if Sriranganathan loses, he will again be contemplating his employment future.
But he would not be drawn on whether he would also run in the state election in October 2024.
“I’m focused on winning, I haven’t really thought much beyond that,” he said.
Labor’s mayoral candidate is Brisbane lawyer Tracey Price.