John William Greene

The 1931 Municipal Elections saw a dramatic change in council, with 10 of the majority Nationalist Citizens Party losing their wards.[10] The incumbent mayor, Archibald Watson, the alderman for Toowong, was defeated, losing his ward to a rival candidate, from the Civic Reform party.[11] Watson had been appointed acting mayor when the incumbent William Jolly retired before the end of his term. The Nationalist Citizens Party was left with only two aldermen out of 20 wards, so Watson would not have retained the Mayoralty even if he had of won his ward, as the State had changed the rules to elect Mayors by a majority vote of the aldermen. This was because the election was held during a time of brief conservative control of the State Government with Arthur Edward Moore, Premier of Queensland. It was anticipated upon the Moore Government's election that the Brisbane City Council would be broken up and that major amendments would be made to City of Brisbane Act 1924. But the critics of a Greater Brisbane were proven to be disappointed, with the rural-based Moore Government taking little interest in metropolitan affairs, and while making some significant changes it left the Council essentially intact. Universal suffrage was removed, in favour of occupier franchise and plural voting, which was expected to favour the incumbent regime. The number of aldermen were reduced by one, and the mayor was to be elected by a vote amongst the aldermen, rather than by direct election.[12] However it was also the time of the Great Depression in Australia, which caused the demise of many administrations, including Brisbane's, and Mayor Watson was reluctantly forced to admit that Council had a large cash shortage. In addition he was taking criticism from the left from the Labor Party over the unfairness of the loss of universal suffrage, and far more severe criticism from the right from various businessmen who wanted to slash Council's costs despite the depression.[13] The conservative vote was split between three conservative parties (Nationalist Citizens, Civic Reform and Progress), with the Civic Reform Party formed in opposition to what they saw as insufficient changes by the Moore Government, and the Progress Party supportive of the government's changes. With the conservative vote split, Labor Party managed to out perform expectations and win 8 wards.[14]

Alderman Greene, the leader of the Progress Party was elected as Lord Mayor on Thursday 14 May 1931, 13 votes to 7 among the city aldermen.[15] He was a compromise candidate, as the winning Labor Party had won 8 wards, and to avoid the anti-Labor Civic Reform Party winning (7 aldermen led by Alderman Falukner, who lost the mayoralty vote to Billy Greene), they joined with three Independent Progressives (including Greene) and the two remaining Nationalist Citizens aldermen to make Greene mayor.[11] Due to the harshness of the Civic Reform campaign they were totally excluded from the Council executive.[16]

While Greene started out as an independent, later aligned with the Progress Party, he ultimately aligned with conservative politics. While he was elected Lord Mayor by the Labor Party votes, by the end of his term, he had joined a consolidated faction of Conservative aldermen, where it seemed he was the popular choice as leader.[17] The Nationalist Citizens Party was strengthened to support all non-Labor candidates, and generally endorsed the incumbent Nationalist, Civic Reform and Independent candidates, although one non-Labor alderman, H. Massey of Toowong did not join, and won re-election easily.[18] Only one incumbent, George Vickers of Windsor Ward, was refused the nomination. Two others, former Civic Reform leader Faulkener and Stephen Payne did not seek endorsement and did not contest the election, Payne due to redistricting.[19] For the next few decades, the CMO was the conservative party contesting the Brisbane City Council elections.

With the Labor Government back in power, the 1934 election saw the Mayor directly elected by the voters, and Greene lost to Labor candidate Alfred Jones. Most of the CMO candidates lost, with Labor winning 14 wards to 6.[20]

Greene did not serve as an alderman again. Despite the poor showing at the 1934 election, Wynnum was won back by the CMO's William Dart, who had previously served the Wynnum Ward from 1925–1931 (before his loss to Greene in the 1931 election), and with Greene running for mayor, Dart was able to win the vacated ward of Wynnum in 1934. Dart held the ward until 1938, before he resigned from council in October to contest the State Legislative Assembly seat of Wynnum, causing a by-election.