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Developers could replace up to half of all single-sex toilets in public buildings under the new National Construction Code. Contact your state minister before the May deadline.

Australia’s National Construction Code 2025 will permit developers to install “all-gender” toilets in place of separate male and female facilities in schools, workplaces, shopping centres and sports venues — with states and territories having until 1 May 2026 to reject the changes.

The Australian Christian Lobby has warned the move would leave women, girls, victims of sexual violence and people from religious or cultural communities with fewer dedicated spaces and compromised privacy.

“This is what happens when privacy is sacrificed for ideology,” the ACL said on X.

ACL CEO Michelle Pearse told The Daily Declaration that the changes put women and children in harm’s way. “These ongoing attempts by activists to remove sex and gender put women and children at risk,” she said. “It’s time this social experiment ends, before someone else is hurt.”

The Australian Building Codes Board released the NCC 2025 preview on 2 February, describing the mixed-sex provisions as “intended to prioritise female use while serving all users.”

The code allows developers to replace up to half of required single-sex facilities with “all-gender” alternatives, so long as the reduction is split equally between male and female quotas.

Installation remains voluntary under the code’s Deemed-to-Satisfy pathway. But critics have noted that voluntary for developers does not mean voluntary for users — women and children would face fewer dedicated single-sex options in buildings where developers opt in.

What the Code Permits

Under clause F4D4(12), sexless facilities may substitute for separate male and female toilets across three different scenarios.

Small buildings requiring only one pan per sex may replace both with mixed-sex facilities. Buildings requiring three pans or urinals in total may install one mixed facility, provided at least one male and one female option remains. And larger buildings requiring four or more may convert up to half their single-sex facilities to shared ones.

Each “all-gender” facility must contain one closet pan and one washbasin in a single compartment, be accessed from a shared circulation space, and be clearly signed as “all gender”.

The code also replaces the word “sex” with “gender” throughout the relevant provisions — a language shift the ABCB has described as part of “modernising and standardising” the NCC.

The ABCB ran a separate consultation on the sexless provisions in mid-2024, outside the main public comment draft process, citing the need for “both technical and policy consideration”. Consultation closed 1 July 2024.

States Can Still Act

The ACL has urged Australians to contact their state Building Ministers before the 1 May 2026 adoption window closes.

Tasmania has already confirmed it will not implement the NCC 2025 mixed-sex provisions.

Each state and territory must independently decide whether to adopt the changes. The ACL’s campaign directs residents in every other jurisdiction to contact ministers directly, arguing the provisions must not proceed.

“The good news is this isn’t final,” the ACL said. “Each state and territory can choose not to adopt these changes before 1 May 2026. This is a critical window to demand governments protect single-sex toilets.”

The organisation described the changes as undermining “privacy, safety and dignity for women, girls, victims of sexual violence, and those from religious or cultural communities,” and called for public spaces to be “designed around biological reality, not ideology.”

Religious and culturally conservative communities have regularly raised concerns about mixed-sex toilet facilities in previous consultations, arguing such designs conflict with longstanding norms of modesty and sex-based privacy.

The building code changes come as federal senators push to restore Australia’s sex-based legal protections — including the Sex Discrimination Act’s original definition of biological sex — amid growing concern over the erosion of single-sex spaces across education, health and public life.

Advocates have repeatedly warned that the removal of biological sex definitions from federal law has exposed women’s protected spaces — bathrooms, changing rooms, shelters and school camps — to ideological pressure that NCC 2025 would embed in the built environment itself.

The NCC 2025 preview is available for download at ncc.abcb.gov.au.

Full publication and adoption decisions by jurisdictions are expected ahead of the 1 May 2026 implementation date.

The ABCB provided a response to the Daily Declaration more than two weeks after the article was first published — but did not cite any peer-reviewed studies, crime data, or risk assessments to support its conclusion that the provisions are safe for women and girls.

The board pointed to its seven-week public consultation and said the single-occupancy design of all-gender facilities “prioritise privacy and safety,” adding that “traditional male only and female only layouts remain fully compliant.”

On the language shift from “sex” to “gender” throughout the code, the ABCB said it “reflects contemporary policy language and anti-discrimination settings.” The board also confirmed it had done no modelling of the likely reduction in dedicated female facilities, saying such modelling “would not have produced reliable or meaningful results.”

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