Council flower power spend emits a bad bouquet

3 months ago 14

Editorial

November 26, 2025 — 4.52pm

Local governments in NSW often find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place but with the Sydney CBD turning into home for increasingly large numbers of homeless men and women, Sydney City Council’s decision to spend nearly $20 million decorating the streets with flowers risks looking like a case of misplaced priorities.

Some of the new planter boxes in George Street.

Financial records published by the council show the SCC flower purchase was part of a contract that had risen from $12.9 million in 2020 to $19.6 million this year. The council attributed the massive financial rise to the increased scope of a greening program that now includes an extra 200 planter boxes in high-pedestrian areas as part of a project aimed at beautifying city streets and “encouraging the community to engage with ornamental horticulture”.

The contract, awarded to Melbourne-based company Citywide Service Solutions, was one of the most expensive entered into by any NSW council last financial year and outstripped the funds SCC spent on other high-priority programs including food support, social and community grants.

A majority of councillors, at a meeting where the contract was discussed, rejected a proposal to trim the flower budget back to $1 million a year and redirect remaining funds to other programs, including permanent native planting.

The money was spent as part of the council’s commitment to boost the CBD’s green cover to 40 per cent by 2050 and Lord Mayor Clover Moore defended the flowerpot extravagance, arguing the planter boxes were not only loved by the community, but a “stunning” addition to CBD streets.

Team Clover councillor Adam Worling laid it on with a trowel saying the initiative was aimed at reducing the city’s carbon footprint. “Every single plant in our city helps cool our city [and] it seems madness when everything is heating up you want to remove the one thing that is cooling it down,” he said.

We can only say, hooray for hollyhocks.

Greens councillors are unimpressed by such disingenuous greenwashing. They wondered why SCC decided to pay a Melbourne company to do the job when there were probably cheaper and more politic alternatives available locally. And, in the midst of an ongoing cost-of-living crisis and financial crisis that has withered spending on other council programs, such profligacy was not a good look.

Adding to the odour, Sydney has the highest number of homeless people in Australia and, this year, inner-city Sydney recorded its highest ever number of people sleeping rough, with a 24 per cent increase since the 2024 count.

Greens councillor Sylvie Ellsmore suggested the lavish flower spree would not pass the pub test.

“The symbolism of the beautiful planter boxes amid an increase in rough sleepers on the streets is not to be lost on anybody and I don’t think the public’s love of the planter boxes would continue if they knew how much we spent on them,” she said.

CBD beautification and homelessness are disparate issues, but councillors have brought themselves a world of pain by naively putting their flowers in one basket.