Wellington City Council nearly rejects petition over gender-neutral toilets
Wednesday, 24 June 2026
The Wellington City Council came within a hair’s breath of rejecting a 1400-plus strong petition to end gender-neutral changing rooms and toilets.
The debate was so toxic that the names on the petition were redacted before it was presented to a council committee on Wednesday morning, petitioner Emily O’Connor confirmed.
The council, in one of its final acts of the previous triennium, passed its Rainbow Action Plan which means that in any significant upgrade or new build of pools and recreation centres, toilets and changing rooms become all-gender “where practically feasible”.
In practice, this has been put into action at the new Wellington central library, Te Matapihi, where toilets are not labelled for men or women and are a series of single-person cubicles.
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The council committee first needed a councillor to move the accepting of the petition and another to second. The vote was only to accept the petition as any change to policy would have to come at a later meeting.
After a long pause, it was moved by councillor Karl Tiefenbacher who said the council should be “ashamed” for being slow to accept it. Petitions should be accepted even if objected to, he said. He was seconded by councillor Ray Chung.
The acceptance then had to go to a council vote, which passed 10 votes to seven. Councillors Afnan Al-Rubayee, Laurie Foon, Rebecca Matthews, Jonny Osborne, Geordie Rogers, Matthew Reweti and deputy mayor Ben McNulty voted against.
Sarah Lamont, who has a trans child, submitted to the council opposing the petition and told them the only danger was to the trans community, if gender-neutral facilities were not provided.
“There has never been an attack of a cis woman [by a trans woman] in a public toilet or changing room in New Zealand,” she said afterwards.
“There is nothing to back this [petition] up. There is no safety risk.”
The petition, signed by 1438 people, called on the council to retain or reinstate public single-sex changing rooms and toilets in council facilities and to abandon the gender-neutral policy.
When appropriate, it called on the council to provide “universal changing rooms” but, in doing so, “give their front-line staff training so the integrity and safety of these spaces is maintained and their messaging on the use of them is consistent”.
It called for the council to “review, clarify and make public their policies for changing rooms and toilets based on research and risk assessments”.
The council confirmed it had just one recorded complaint about the issue in its system. The complainant said they felt uncomfortable because a member of the trans community was using the same changing room the complainant was in.
O’Connor, the petitioner, confirmed to The Post she had complained about a biological man using the Freyberg Pool’s women’s changing rooms.
She said a lot of people had concerns, and complained to her about the issue, but did not want to go public because of potential work repercussions and “they don’t want their kids to tell them off”.
Fellow petitioner Linda Sheldon, who was sexually assaulted as a child by a man in a women’s changing rooms, said girls were already avoiding toilets and changing rooms because they did not want to share them with boys and men.