Aus Post Casually Spent $800K On Plants Over The Last Two Years, ‘Cos Same

Apparently, Australia Post and I have a lot in common.

We all love a bit of greenery around the office, right? Plants clean the air, make the space look aesthetic and supposedly give off some good vibes, but apparently Australia Post loves plants more than anyone: just take a look at their ridiculous foliage budget from last year.

Yep, that’s right, the postal service spent a chilling $382,604 on plants and greenery across 25 offices across Australia from Frenchams Indoor Plants (lucky them) over the 2018 – 2019 financial year.

While that's already a ridiculous amount, would you believe that over the 2019 – 2020 financial year they spent $378,240 and another $64,118 this 2020 financial year so far? For those of you without calculators rn that’s a whopping $824,962 between 2018 and 2020.

Their excuse? The plants boost productivity, creativity and happiness in the office. Mmkay… I’d probably argue the same in my home tbh.

A study published by the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that including some greenery into your office space can improve your productivity by up to 15 per cent.

While this all sounds lovely, Australia Post should maybe take a closer look at their spending, seeing as CEO Christine Holgate is the highest paid civil servant in the country, with her making a total of $2.5 million across a single year.

It was also recently revealed that Australia Post had hired a $3,000-a-day “reputation management firm” and then went on to spend $300,000 on corporate credit cards and cars driven by chauffeurs.

Holgate has been called out after the Senate estimated that the postal service paid $12,000 to gift four Cartier watches to some of their executives (tsk tsk).

Considering they’ve also been trying to cut postal jobs since June and have been behind in services like pretty much every Christmas and of course because of the pandemic, their reputation isn’t looking the greatest (what even is that firm doing?).

So now that they’ve spent the money, fingers crossed that they can actually keep these plants alive. I don’t have high hopes. (please do not over water them oml).

If you see me near an Australia Post office, no you didn’t.

Header Image: MmeEmil via Getty Images