Australian Multicultural Foundation and SBS chairman Hass Dellal said One Nation leader Pauline Hanson's preoccupation with the Australian Tax Office (ATO) implementing some squat toilets in its Melbourne office reeked of "insecurity".
ATO's acting chief finance officer Justin Untersteiner told the Herald Sun this week that the office deployed the toilets because it was committed to “maintaining an inclusive workplace".
Pauline Hanson asked in a Facebook video posted on Sunday: “If they don’t know how to use our toilets…then what the hell is going on?”
She then responded to a comment on that post: “It’s not just a matter of dollars Wade. It starts with toilets and ends with costing us our Australian way of life.”
Mr Dellal said concern that squat toilets would impinge on Australian culture did not stand given their largely universal use and Australia's multicultural fabric.
“After all it’s not anything new in Western or Asian or Middle Eastern societies.
“This has been common practice in Asia, southern Europe, France, Germany, Turkey, Greece, some of the former Soviet republics.
Mr Dellal added that policy makers should be focused on "bigger issues".
“Considering there are so many things happening in the world, so many bigger issues, I don’t know why so many people are concerned about a couple of squat toilets in a couple of buildings,” he said.
“The insecurity around these sorts of things, I mean it’s just a toilet.”
If anything, Mr Dellal said they were healthier options to sitting ones.
“There’s enough scientific evidence in what I can see and what I read to show that squatting is the best position for effective evacuation of the bladder and the bowel.”
A waste of taxpayers’ money?
Pauline Hanson expressed concern that squat toilets could burden the taxpayer.
“I know what’s more confusing and it’s definitely not using a squat toilet, it’s doing our tax.”
Hass Dellal said a study into the productivity of squat toilets versus sitting toilets could provide clarity “if that’s how ridiculous we want to get around this”.
“Lots of people tend to go into these toilets with their newspapers and spend hours wasting time, so maybe we should do a study around that.
"Or maybe the health benefits and the saving of taxpayer dollars through reduction of bowel cancers and other intestinal ailments if that’s the extent we want to go to.”
