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SBS acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia.
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For SBS examines, this is Lera Shvets.
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We've all experienced it. Trying to find a public toilet can be stressful, but for many people, in fact, a significant fraction of Australians, it's more than
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that. A toilet becomes something that I think we all take for granted, but for a person who experienced homelessness, a toilet becomes a luxury. And when you're living a life that revolves around deprivation, having that.
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Brief experience. You feel that you're being acknowledged as a person.
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Anthony Pearce and his colleague David Streatfield from advisory group StreetCare speaking at the public hearing of the New South Wales Parliament inquiry into public toilets last year. Central Station because the doors open all day.
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a charge, you know, doing your business in public, so you sort of slept. The first of its kind, the inquiry brought diverse groups of people together to share their lived experiences of how inadequate access to public toilets impacts their lives. This is Judy Findlay from the Country Women's Association also speaking at the hearing. If you were
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The Pacific Highway between North Sydney and Brisbane, you would travel for at least 5 hours before reaching a public toilet with any changing facilities. In western New South Wales, if you travel west of Dubbo, there are simply none available at all, and this is per the national public
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In this week's episode, SBS examines asks how do public toilets highlight inequality.
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I think public toilets are a really important form of infrastructure that are undervalued and underrated. They're often the last thing considered when we're looking at our plans and our public spaces and our transport networks.
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But they are essential to social inclusion and social cohesion.
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Katherine Webber is a public toilet advocate and researcher. She's an expert on taboos, design, policy, and legal barriers around public toilets. She told SBS Examines. While Australia does great in comparison to many other countries, we lack certain legal frameworks. So
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while we have building codes that regulate
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How many toilets need to be included within buildings. When we leave the building, we don't have any standards that say how many public toilets we need to provide either per person or per kilometre, and we also don't have any legislative requirement on a level of government or an agency that says you are responsible for providing public toilets.
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Public toilets provided by local governments can easily be closed.
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There isn't a legislative requirement that says they are part of the public space network or they're part of our public transport network. So if there is any conflict between user groups or if it becomes very expensive to operate, it can be easier to close a public toilet than to ensure continued access.
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The further you get away from a capital city, the harder it is to go to the bathroom, and then what is accessible is old. Often the gradients are really hard to get into the bathrooms. The grab rails aren't overly
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helpful. Jeramy Hope is the president of People with Disability Australia.
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As a full-time walker user and a father of a child with autism, he says accessible toilets are critical.
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The amount of times I go racing, looking for a toilet, whether that's out at a business lunch, whether that's at the airports, and some of the difficulty is to be able to go to the toilet in dignity, to be able to have somewhere private that is accessible, that is safe. For me it means that I can navigate my wheelchair and my
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Walker. Julian Laurens is a senior policy officer with People with Disability Australia. He said their organisation often hears from people with disability having to plan their entire day around the availability of a public toilet.
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You cuts short, you cut outings short, you miss family events, opportunities. It's literally about whether you can take part in everyday life.
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I mean, I knew I was trans from around my early teens, and then that causes a lot of issues when it comes to stuff like public bathrooms.
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Elster is an Aboriginal trans disabled woman. In the past she's avoided using public toilets for safety reasons, and
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I would come to situations where I had to make the decision between do I go to the women's bathroom and risk getting
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Transphobic rhetoric, or do I go into the guys' bathroom and put myself at risk of violence? I did have at least one where I was getting so much hate that I just decided to use the men's room once. And then because I did that and looked feminine enough, I received physical violence.
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Dr. Sasha Bailey is a research fellow at the centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. She
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Told SBS examines many transgender people have anxiety about public toilets and avoid them if they can. A large study of LGBTQI youth in Australia found profound impacts on the physical and mental health of young transgender people. In that
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study, we see that over 60% reported in the past 12 months avoiding using the toilet. Nearly.
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2 in 5 had in the past 12 months limited how much they had eaten or drank to avoid having to go to the toilet, and you know, in this same sample, around 7% of trans young Australians had developed a urinary tract infection, kidney infection, or other kidney related problem, um, in the last 12 months in relation to toilet access.
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There's a map in Australia of all the toilets, and after 25 years of operations, the national public toilet map of Australia has become a bit of a
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phenomenon. Jim Cooper is the CEO of Continence Health Australia. 1 in 4 people in Australia have continence issues, which amounts to over 7 million people. Continent Health Australia runs the annual Great Dunny Hunt, urging the public to add public toilets to the national map.
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To help others find existing facilities across the country, it now has over 25,000 facilities registered. What it's
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turned into is this general purpose fantastic directory, and people who are travelling use the map tradespeople, disabled people, emergency services, police, Uber drivers, and also everyone who has continence challenges. And the purpose of the national public toilet map and the Great Dunny Hunt where we add more toilets every year is to help.
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Those people with incontinence,
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in particular, Researcher Katherine Webber says we should all pay more attention to public toilets, more than just a convenience. They represent equality and dignity. As part
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of the United Nations, we have a right to water and sanitation, which equates to the right to public toilets. Therefore, it is important that our cities and our planners and our architects and our builders are responding to that right by providing adequate and accessible public toilets.
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This episode was produced and presented by Lera Shvets for SBS examines. For more, visit SBS.com.au/examines.
