The magnificent women of Women Speak Tasmania are angry, and rightly so.
First, they’re angry that the brand-new Recreation Hub at Mowbray, Launceston, has no single-sex toilets or changerooms.
And then, they’re angry that ABC Northern Tasmania chose to report this via a particularly exasperating little piece on its radio breakfast show on 28 April, with reporter Sunshine Wood ‘chatting’ (as the ABC itself put it) with Launceston mayor Matthew Garwood. With the two of them spending quite some time exchanging in-jokes based on Garwood’s having been a 2014 finalist on The Voice. Jokes about the ‘great acoustics’ of the Rec Hub toilet facilities and the likely effect of launching into ‘Les Misérables or something’ from one of the cubicles.
All a bit tasteless, when the intro to the chat had included a listener’s concern that, given the fully enclosed doors on the cubicles, ‘A perpetrator can force a victim into one of those all-gender toilets and with the door closed and bolted, no one on the outside has any idea of what’s going on inside’.
ABC, take note: We love your local radio, but the abolition of women’s toilets is no laughing matter. Get your reporters up to speed on the implications so they can conduct proper interviews on the issue.
Aunty, do you not hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry women?
If not, read WST’s blog – it’s super polite, but you’ll get the message.
by Vera Figner
Source: Women’s Cooee
https://www.womenscooee.org/2026/05/19/the-noises-of-north-tassie