“I was basically grovelling and promising that you can’t see anything … I had to show her how [the breast pump] goes under my shirt and I promise nobody is going to be able to see a nipple.”
The Virgin business lounge at Melbourne Airport.
Turner said she was flying back from a medical conference in Perth and had to stop over in Melbourne where she went for a cup of tea and to pump breast milk for her six-month-old twins.
The GP said she tried to tell the staff member that it was her legal right to pump milk and breastfeeding is protected under the Sex Discrimination Act.
“I was so flabbergasted and so just in absolute sort of disbelief and shock and she was so adamant that she really made me second-guess whether I was right.”
Turner said she finished pumping and tried unsuccessfully to call guest services before stopping on her way out of the lounge to again tell the supervisor that asking her to stop pumping was illegal “and you made me feel pretty cruddy about it”.
Turner said the woman put a hand on her arm and asked her to leave the lounge.
A spokeswoman for Virgin has issued an apology. Credit: Getty
“She said that I was making her uncomfortable, and that I was making other people uncomfortable by having this conversation there at the front desk and that I needed to leave and she’d file a complaint about me.”
Turner, a general practitioner on the Gold Coast who specialises in women’s health, posted about the incident on her social media, describing how furious she was at the “disgusting” treatment.
Turner said breastfeeding parents needed more support and there should be a normalisation of feeding your baby at a systemic and societal level.
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A spokeswoman for Virgin Australia apologised on behalf of the airline.
“We are sorry for the way this situation was handled,” she said. “It fell short of the high standards of care and customer service our team strives to deliver. We have reached out to our guest today to apologise directly.”
Victoria Marshall-Cerins, executive officer at The Australian Breastfeeding Association, said breastfeeding, and that included expressing breast milk, was a legally protected right.
“It’s pretty disappointing to still be having these conversations and for women to be having these experiences in 2025,” she said. “Women have the right to breastfeed and express in public places, wherever they are lawfully able to be, so whether that is a shopping centre or a theatre or the business lounge at an airport.”
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Marshall-Cerins said the vast majority of pregnant women in Australia wanted to breastfeed.
“Many women are stopping breastfeeding before they’ve achieved their goals, and it’s things like this that really contribute to that,” she said. “When we put obstacles in the way of women being able to achieve their breastfeeding goals we are excluding them. We are making what is already an activity that requires a lot of time and a lot of commitment, we’re making that even more difficult.”
A spokeswoman for Melbourne Airport said there were no restrictions on women breastfeeding or pumping milk in the airport.
“We’re an airport where everyone should feel welcome,” she said. “We have several parenting rooms across our terminals with comfortable spaces for breastfeeding – including chairs and microwaves – and for changing nappies.”
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