2024 Ipswich City Council election should not be confused with 2024 Ipswich Borough Council election.
| Country: | Queensland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ongoing: | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Previous Election: | 2020 Ipswich City Council election | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Previous Year: | 2020 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Next Election: | 2028 Ipswich City Council election | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Next Year: | 2028 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Election Date: | 16 March 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The 2024 Ipswich City Council election was held on 16 March 2024 to elect a mayor and eight councillors to the City of Ipswich. The election was held as part of the statewide local elections in Queensland, Australia.[1]
Teresa Harding was re-elected mayor with 57.73% of the vote after preferences, a swing of 5.25% against her.[2]
At the 2020 election, Teresa Harding was elected mayor, defeating six other candidates. She was the first non-Labor Party aligned Ipswich mayor in 50 years.[3]
Four independents, two Independent Labor candidates and two candidates on the "Your Voice Of Experience" ticket were also elected as councillors.[4]
Division 3 councillor Marnie Doyle joined the Labor Party in March 2023.[5]
Prior to 2020, Ipswich City Council was composed of a directly elected mayor and 10 single-member wards (or divisions), both using optional preferential voting.[6]
In July 2019, it was announced that the 10 single-member wards would be replaced by four two-member wards, reducing the total amount of councillors to eight.[6] Preferential voting was removed and replaced by plurality block voting (also referred to as first-past-the-post by the Electoral Commission), where voters are only required to mark the same amount of candidates as there are positions to be elected − in the case of Ipswich, two candidates.[7] [8]
Optional preferential voting is used for the mayoral election.[6]
In April 2023, former councillor David Martin stated he would again run for mayor after his unsuccessful campaign in 2020.[9]
Division 1 councillor Sheila Ireland announced in December 2023 that she would contest the mayoralty and form Team Sheila Ireland.[10]
Marnie Doyle and Andrew Fechner, the two Division 3 councillors, formed the "Better Brighter Ipswich" ticket in early 2024.[11] Former mayor Andrew Antoniolli, who won the 2017 by-election before the council was dismissed in 2018, also contested Division 3 as an independent, having previously been a Labor member.[12]
On 26 January 2024, Ipswich West MP Jim Madden resigned from the Queensland state parliament to contest Division 4. This triggered a by-election in his seat, held on the same day as the local elections.[13]