On Tuesday, it was revealed the council spent $13,975 on sending Lord Mayor Graham Quirk’s 2018-19 Budget Newsletter for four council wards including Deagon, Forest Lake, Tennyson and The Gabba.

Labor councillors represent Deagon and Forest Lake wards, independent councillor Nicole Johnston is the councillor for Tennyson while Greens councillor Jonathan Sri represents The Gabba.

The other three wards held by Labor – Moorooka, Morningside and Wynnum Manly – did not receive the brochure.

The brochure was not sent to any of Brisbane’s 19 LNP wards.

Ratepayers paid $6700.98 for the design, print and production of the brochures and a further $7274.87 for the distribution.

This cost was funded as part of the lord mayor’s office budget.

In addition to the brochures sent to select wards, the council spent $96,590 sending a brochure called the “8 principles to guide our city” to 511,000 homes across Brisbane, $12,775 printing 56,300 copies of an edition of a business brochure, a further $12,917 on sending 56,300 copies of a second business brochure and sending out another edition of the business brochure cost $12,724 for 54,000 copies.

In council chambers on Tuesday afternoon, opposition councillor Steve Griffiths moved an urgency motion and called on the council’s chief executive to refer the abuse of ratepayer money to the Department of Local Government for urgent review.

Deputy mayor and public and active transport chairman Adrian Schrinner quickly stood up and said he believed the motion was incompetent because nothing the council advised had anything to do with LNP.

Council chairman Angela Owen sought legal advice but did not uphold this point.

Cr Griffiths said this was an attempt to shut down debate.

“They don’t want any publicity about what they are up to,” he said.

While speaking to the urgency motion Cr Griffiths said it was not right for public money to be used advertising the lord mayor or the LNP administration.

“It should be used for public discourse and public advertising but not for advertising the lord mayor,” he said.

“This an abuse of ratepayer money, not a good use of ratepayer money.”

Cr Griffiths said the council’s chief executive should take this information to the local government minister to see what reasonable guidelines would be for using public funding for advertising.

“At the state and federal level we would never see advertising of the prime minister or of the state premier on publications such as this,” he said.

A spokesman for the lord mayor said the budget newsletter communicated key initiatives.

“This newsletter is funded out of the Lord Mayor’s Councillor budget, in the same way that Ward Councillors have budgets for communication activities.”

Fairfax Media did not receive a response to questions about why it was only sent to four non-LNP wards and how the wards were selected.

Cr Griffiths said the brochures were only sent to marginal wards.

Greens councillor Jonathan Sri said only sending the brochure to select wards said the administration was feeling concerned about how much support they were losing to the greens over issues like over-development and public transport.

“The fact that they didn’t bother sending ads to Moorooka, Morningside or Wynnum suggests they’ve given up on trying to win back those seats,” he said.

Independent councillor Nicole Johnston said the Lord Mayor’s decision to target only a few ALP, Green and her independent ward showed he was playing politics with council marketing materials.

Opposition leader Peter Cumming wrote to Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe on Tuesday afternoon to make him aware of the urgency motion.

"We ask that as the Minister for Local Government you give urgent consideration to investigating the use of millions of dollars in ratepayer funds to advertise the lord mayor and LNP administration," he said.

"In our view, similar standards to those at a state and federal level in relation to the use of funds for materials and advertising should apply.”

A spokesman for Mr Hinchliffe said the letter had been received and would be considered the same way all matters raised by councillors across Queensland were.