By Cara Waters
Melbourne will get more public toilets and men’s facilities will include change tables to encourage a more equal share of parenting responsibilities if Jamal Hakim is elected the city’s next lord mayor, the candidate says.
Hakim said if he was elected in October, he would commit to a review of permanent toilets to ensure there were adequate bathroom facilities in the City of Melbourne. He said residents had complained about the lack of public toilets in Docklands’ Victoria Harbour precinct.
City of Melbourne lord mayoral candidate Jamal Hakim wants more accessible toilets in Melbourne. Credit: Chris Hopkins
“What’s happening is people coming off the boats there are basically defecating in the [open] space, and that’s causing a lot of issues for locals,” he said. “There’s no mechanism that allows or that requires council to continually ensure that there are toilets, and our population is about to double.”
Hakim said a trial was under way for opening toilets to the public in a building in Victoria Harbour, but another potential option was a standalone self-cleaning toilet, which would cost $1 million ($500,000 for the facility and $500,000 to install).
He said he would ensure men’s toilets included change tables so parenting responsibilities were shared more equally between women and men.
“That’s part of the challenge when it comes to child-rearing, and that responsibility always falls on women,” he said.
Hakim said that if he were elected mayor, the council would rebrand maternal and child healthcare centres as parental and child healthcare centres.
“It’s all about making sure that fathers, grandparents, everybody feels that they can access those healthcare centres,” he said. “That’s very much a change in not just name, but actually in the change in the way those programs are considered.”
Hakim said he would spend $6 million over four years for the toilet review and accessibility upgrades, including installing a lift from the back of Flinders Street Station to the north bank of the Yarra.
He would also invest in toy libraries, organise a local family discount card and create a grant program to support businesses in developing onsite childcare facilities and child-friendly workspaces.
Gender equity and family advocate Michael Ray (left) helped Hakim devise his policy on public toilets.Credit: Chris Hopkins
“To bring people into the city, you can’t just give them a free coffee or tell them to come back in,” he said. “You have to incentivise them and create an environment where coming into the office makes sense.”
One of rival lord mayoral candidate Anthony Koutoufides’ policies is to provide free coffee to CBD workers.
Hakim said more young families were moving to Melbourne and the city needed to be more inclusive and family friendly.
“They say it takes a village to raise a child, and what I’m saying is, Melbourne will be that village, and we need to offer the social, economic and cultural support to make everybody be part of that,” he said.
Gender equity and family advocate Michael Ray, who worked with Hakim on the policy, said the fact syringe disposal units had been retrofitted into men’s toilets but change tables hadn’t was a “screaming indictment” on how society treated men and women.
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