In an ideal world, yes, the council-owned toilets would be free to use (and there’d be some mechanism for taxing tourism so the people that are using the beach and car park toilets are the ones paying for them). But I really do think Americans and Australians are overstating how common this is, because it really is a minority of toilets - I only actually know of two in my area, compared to dozens of other toilets that are completely free to use.
I’m Australian and we’re also weirded out by paid toilets.
Any of them is what we think of, but it’s even worse when it’s a public toilet. At least a private business being shitty is their natural state.
In an ideal world, yes, the council-owned toilets would be free to use (and there’d be some mechanism for taxing tourism so the people that are using the beach and car park toilets are the ones paying for them). But I really do think Americans and Australians are overstating how common this is, because it really is a minority of toilets - I only actually know of two in my area, compared to dozens of other toilets that are completely free to use.