Motion lost to fund support for rough sleepers in Sydney CBD

Funds saved from cancelling Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s lavish New Year’s Eve party should have been spent on homeless outreach services — not more Christmas decorations.

• Ratepayers to fork out close to $40K on Paris and London trip conference
• ‘Plenty of room for growth in city suburbs’

Funds saved from cancelling Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s lavish New Year’s Eve party should have been spent on homeless outreach services — not more Christmas decorations.

That was the message from Liberal councillor Christine Forster whose motion calling for the reallocation of funds was lost at the last City of Sydney council meeting.

City of Sydney’s New Year’s Eve party had been held annually since 1996 but last year the $621,500 event was cancelled following protests over the extreme costs.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore later announced the funding for the party would be reallocated to projects that aligned with the Environmental Action Strategy.

At last week’s council meeting, Cr Forster put forward a motion that called for the money to be reallocated to provide outreach services for the homeless.

“There are other more pressing needs, with which we could apply this funding,” she said.

“I’m suggesting in this motion we would be providing additional outreach to people who are sleeping rough.

“We had 321 recorded in February and 278 in August, that is an awful lot of people who are unfortunately sleeping rough on the street.

“The $621,500 really could go a long way in creating additional public space liaison officers, who could of course by their very presence on the streets of the city, provide outreach to people who are in need.”

Christine Forster says we should spend more on homeless people. Picture: Richard Dobson

CEO Monica Barone said the money in the budget had since been reallocated to other needs.

It went towards additional catering at the disabled children’s picnic, the NYE pylon projections, the new Martin Place Christmas tree and decorations, the Green Square Christmas concert, increased crowd control and a NYE accessibility officer.

After calculating the difference between the initial budget and reallocation of funds, Cr Forster argued there would be enough money “to have an extra public liaison officer to do exactly what this motion seeks to achieve, which is to provide additional outreach and service support for people who are living rough on Sydney streets”.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore at the Launch of City of Sydney's Christmas Festivities program. Picture: John Appleyard

“We do everything we can to help the homeless people,” she said. “There is money available from this process. We should be putting that money into getting help for people who need it most rather than just saying, aren’t we lucky we had extra money from not having the Dawes Point Christmas party and we put it into other Christmas parties, other NYE parties,”

Cr Forster’s motion was lost.

The City of Sydney’s Homelessness Unit has three full time equivalent public space liaison officer positions which, between them, provide a seven day per week service, a council document said.