There are times when you read a story and think, this must be satire.
But no, here we are watching a Melbourne primary school twist itself into ideological knots over toilets for kids starting from the age of six.
It turns out the most pressing issue at Camberwell Primary isn’t literacy, numeracy, bullying, teacher shortages or jammed classrooms.
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It’s the decision by the school’s leadership to spend public money on building an all-gender toilet block for grades 2 to 4, while the boys’ and girls’ toilets are located about 50 metres away in the senior part of the school.
This is a long way when you are six and desperate, and the teacher is telling you to hurry.
But this is not a one-off, and it’s not confined to a single school. Camberwell Primary is the clearest example of a much broader problem.
Across Australia, a growing number of primary schools are quietly making decisions about shared, all-gender facilities for very young children, often without proper consultation, clear evidence or any national guidance. Parents are finding out late, asking questions after the fact and being told it’s already been decided.
Jeni O’Dowd Credit: Supplied
Two other Victorian primary schools, Clifton Springs and Brunswick East, have created shared unisex facilities, sparking parent petitions at both schools.
There are scattered examples of primary schools in other States quietly rolling out gender-neutral toilets too, from Mona Vale Public School in NSW to St Patrick’s Primary in Gympie, Queensland.
Even a WA primary school has rebadged a “universal access” loo as an all-gender option, all without any national plan or public tally of what is actually going on.
You must think there are a lot of gender-neutral kids, aged between six and eight, at these schools for principals to make such a decision?
I certainly don’t know, and nor does anyone else. There is no national data on how many Australian primary school children identify as trans or gender diverse. The Australian Bureau of Statistics will not collect sex-at-birth and gender identity information until the 2026 census.
The first national LGBTI+ snapshot in 2024 estimated that nearly 1 per cent of Australians aged 16 years or older are trans or gender diverse.
And if that is the benchmark for teenagers and adults, the figure for primary school children is not just small, it is vanishingly small.
In the case of Camberwell Primary, Sky News reported its principal Janet Gale told parents the all-gender toilets were “part of ensuring safer and more inclusive facilities in line with the school’s obligations under anti-discrimination law”.
However, as Sky News confirmed, there is no such government target for gender-neutral toilets, and they are not required by law.
So why do it? I have three words for this: Woke. Gone. Mad.
When parents asked Ms Gale for proper consultation, they were rejected. When they raised concerns about the children’s safety and dignity, they were brushed aside. That is not the inclusion the school’s principal seems to want; it’s pure contempt.
When parents asked the government to intervene, Victorian Deputy Premier and Education Minister Ben Carroll said it was the principal’s decision.
So we are now letting individual principals redesign social norms?
The students did their own survey on whether they want gender-neutral toilets, and guess what? Not surprisingly, the majority wanted separate toilets in their part of the school. And, like their parents, their wishes have also been ignored.
What baffles me is the age of kids this has been decided for. Many still believe in Santa, some still need to sleep with a parent, while others can’t even tie their own shoelaces.
We all know children at that age go through phases. One week they want to be an astronaut, the next a fireman and the next a dog. This is perfectly normal.
What is not normal is inconveniencing the majority for a tiny minority (if they even exist) to appear progressive.
It’s also not normal to influence little kids before many even know who they are, what they think or how to separate their own ideas from whatever an adult has handed to them.
How are these schools allowed to do this without any evidence? What next? Mixed-gender change rooms for six-year-olds? Pronoun policies for kindy? A survey to find out whether Year 2s identify as a flock of unicorns?
A school should be a haven. A place where children feel safe, parents feel informed, and decisions are made by adults with accountability, not decided behind closed doors on some ideological whim.
