Pacific Islander Women Face Injury, Debt, and Fear During Pregnancy in Australia

For the Pacific Islander women who harvest the fruit and vegetables that stock Australia's supermarket shelves, motherhood here can mean injury, debt, secrecy and fear.

Sure, Priscilla could hide her growing belly from her supervisors on the grape farm. But there was no disguising the way exhaustion crept through her limbs as she stripped leaves off vine after vine in the heat. She'd rest often. But her rate of work declined, and, as a result, so did her income.

Priscilla's employers clocked her pregnancy soon enough. The two men employed several Pacific Islanders, including Priscilla, under the table, as none of them had the correct immigration documents to work legally in Australia. They told her to lay down in the shed whenever her body felt weak; it wasn't good for the growing baby to spend so long in the sun.

This was Priscilla's fourth pregnancy, and her first in Australia. Her other three children were still in Vanuatu, looked after by her parents. And though the morning sickness and severe fatigue came as no surprise to her, navigating pregnancy alone was challenging.

"To have a child in Vanuatu, it's easy," she says. "But here, I'm a bit worried, because all my family is in Vanuatu, and I'm all by myself here."

Without a valid visa, Priscilla didn't know when she could return home. Luckily, her new boyfriend was with her and could pay for food and rent on the days she was too unwell to work.

I first met Priscilla out the front of her accommodation complex, a series of corrugated iron sheds in rural Victoria, each living space big enough for a double bed and not much else. She was four months pregnant and still working on a grape farm. She had not seen a doctor. She had no car, no Medicare, and was anxious about the cost of a check-up.

Like many of the women I spoke with during my investigation, Priscilla was nervous about meeting me. Would I call immigration authorities? Would she be deported? But when I explained in Bislama, a language I picked up while volunteering in Vanuatu several years ago, that I was interested in her fears around giving birth in this foreign land, and wanted to follow her pregnancy, she agreed — as long as I changed her name and made sure she couldn't be identified. All the Pacific workers you will read about in this story have been given pseudonyms.

Pregnancy in the shadows

For women like Priscilla who harvest the fruit and vegetables that stock Australia's supermarket shelves, motherhood here can mean injury, debt, secrecy and fear.

She is one of an unknown number of Pacific Islander women who have fallen pregnant while living and working in Australia without valid visas. They cannot access Medicare or health insurance, or secure maternity support.

Though these women remain officially uncounted, researchers, community members, and my own reporting suggest scores of Pacific workers in this situation have given birth across Australia.

Some delay medical care for months. Some attempt abortions at home. Many of their children enter the world in legal limbo, with no birth certificate or recognised immigration status.

Experts warn the situation is dangerous, and entangled with Australia's growing dependence on Pacific labour.

Priscilla didn't plan to get pregnant when she first arrived in Australia as part of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme. She simply wanted to work.

"I keep enough money for my needs, and everything else gets transferred to my family in Vanuatu," she says.

We are sitting on plastic chairs in the industrial-sized kitchen at the accommodation complex. Something is spluttering on the stove behind us, sending a bitter smell into the air. Whenever Priscilla starts to answer a question, she looks over at her boyfriend for approval.

When they began their relationship soon after arriving in Australia, the news made it back home via social media and tongues began wagging. They both had partners in Vanuatu, and their families saw this new relationship in Australia as insincere — though the couple say their previous relationships were over well before they became an item. Having a child, Priscilla and her boyfriend hoped, would put rumours to rest and help solidify their commitment to each other in the eyes of their families back home.

Most participants in the PALM scheme are unable to bring their spouses or children to Australia while they are working here. While a pilot program was recently launched allowing up to 200 Pacific workers to bring their families to Australia, most are on visas that allow only them, and no dependants, to make the temporary move. The distance can lead to extramarital relationships, and the breakdown of families.

Priscilla is happy to be pregnant but concerned about the future of her unborn child.

"I know it will cost money to go to the hospital, deliver the baby, buy baby clothes, so I'm already working to cover it," she tells me.

The disengaged

Planning for the future has become even more complicated since Priscilla and her boyfriend left the official PALM scheme, claiming their employer was not paying them fairly.

More than 30,000 Pacific Islanders are working across Australia under the PALM scheme, on contracts ranging from nine months to four years. Most work in agriculture, though the program also supplies labour to meat processing, hospitality, health and aged care.

For Australia, the scheme fills jobs in industries and regions that struggle to find local workers. For Pacific countries, it promises workers the chance to earn in one season what might otherwise take years at home. This money goes toward building permanent cement houses to replace fragile huts in their villages, school fees, buying cars and developing businesses. Often, they earn enough to support multiple family members.

But those dreams aren't always realised. Deductions for flights, visas, accommodation and other costs can leave workers struggling when farm hours dry up — particularly for those who entered the scheme before October 2025 when a minimum guarantee of 120 hours per month was introduced. Exploitation and abuse can push others to the brink. As a result, some abandon their approved employers, hoping to earn more elsewhere.

"Disengaging", as it is known, often means losing visa status and the formal support attached to the scheme. The Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner last year said there were about 7,000 "disengaged" Pacific workers in Australia, warning they were especially vulnerable to exploitation.

Pregnancy can magnify every risk. While private insurance arranged through the scheme, and paid for by wage deductions, offers limited cover for pregnancy or reproductive care, it is only available if the worker has been in Australia for at least a year. For women like Priscilla, who leave the program, even this level of cover can evaporate. Access to paid leave or other workplace protections also vanishes, leaving some working deep into pregnancy.

Now in Australia illegally on an expired visa, women like Priscilla live with the constant risk of Border Force raids while trying to earn enough for themselves and their child. Returning home carries another set of risks — some fear going back empty handed to families who are expecting large remittances, while others know their disengagement from PALM makes any future return to Australia almost impossible.

Living in Australia is "hard work tumas", Priscilla says — too much hard work. It's a refrain I would hear often from women who fell pregnant while working the fields.

'I shouldn't have a baby'

About one hour's drive from Priscilla's accommodation complex, another disengaged farm worker I'm calling Rosie is juggling care for two babies. One is hers — a nine-month-old girl — the other one-year-old is the daughter of a Pacific worker currently out on a farm.

There are empty beer bottles out the front of the house. When the sun goes down, workers often gather in the backyard, drinking kava on plastic chairs arranged in a semicircle.

About a year ago, when Rosie found out she was pregnant, she tried to end it herself. She downed copious amounts of "strong drink", vodka and other spirits, hoping to kill the foetus. It didn't work.

"I shouldn't have a baby. I didn't want a baby," the 45-year-old, whose visa has expired, tells me. "I came here to work."

She already has four children in Vanuatu. Two are in school and being looked after by her sister. The other two are old enough to take care of themselves.

When she was four months pregnant, a friend encouraged her to go to the clinic and ask for an abortion. But Rosie never made the appointment. She was worried the procedure would be too expensive. And, besides, by then she felt that removing one of "God's creations" from her body was wrong. "That's my thought, anyway," she says in a whisper.

Across much of the Pacific, abortion remains heavily restricted. It is often illegal unless a woman's life is at risk, and cultural taboos mean the topic is rarely discussed openly. Several Pacific Island workers I spoke to brought those fears with them to Australia. Like Rosie, they were frightened of seeking help to end an unwanted pregnancy, even in a country where abortion care is legal.

The first time Rosie saw a health practitioner, she was more than halfway through her pregnancy. A few months later, she was on the delivery table giving birth. It cost her $1,300 — a significant amount of money for the farm worker. At that stage, however, her baby's father was in the picture, and thoughhe didn't go to the hospital to witness the birth, he was able to support Rosie and the child financially as she recovered.

As Rosie speaks to me, her daughter bounces on my lap. We're sitting cross legged in a makeshift nursery in the sunroom of the house. Rosie is trying to feed the other child rice and boiled vegetables from a bowl, though the baby seems more interested in playing.

A cream-coloured scar runs across the top of Rosie's forehead — a reminder of when her partner hit her a few months ago. Blood ran down her face. The baby cried. Police were called, and the man was put in immigration detention, to be sent back to Vanuatu.

Before the incident, Rosie planned to stay in Australia, to raise her child here. But without her partner, life is too difficult, she says. Despite his abuse, she wants to be by his side.

"Food, rent, and then if the kid needs something, I'm the one who has to somehow buy it," she says. "So that's why I need to go back to Vanuatu and stay with him so he can help me."

Until then, she will rely on charity — places like The Orange Door, a Victorian government-run family violence service that helps women and children regardless of visa status — with toys, nappies, and financial support.

Most of the women I meet for this story have experienced domestic abuse. Julie, who left the Pacific labour scheme while pregnant believing her employer was "taking advantage" of her, says her partner's abuse began after she gave birth to her first child in Australia. He hit her, and she obtained a protection order.

But the order created a deeper problem of surviving alone in Australia with a baby and no secure income.

"If your partner leaves you here, you have to find every possible way to make sure your child survives," Julie, who is from Vanuatu, says.

For four months, she began cleaning rooms at a caravan park, placing her small baby on the bed while she worked. Later, she had the order and abuse case against her ex lifted so she could return to him, and they had another child together. She hoped giving him a son would change him. It did not.

"I have big regrets," Julie says. "If I didn't have children, I'd be able to survive by myself."

The health workers 'flying blind'

Had Rosie or Julie sought medical help to end their pregnancy, they may have found themselves in Melanie Jamieson's consulting room.

On most days, Jamieson sees at least one woman without Medicare in Sunraysia's sexual and reproductive health hub.

Some of the women — about four or five a month — will ask for an abortion. At that point, Jamieson has to explain to them the price: at least $700 for the necessary ultrasound and checks before any procedure takes place.

The women become anxious. Their blood pressure drops. Some of them look at their friend or partner and let out a nervous giggle. Jamieson feels she can read their minds at that moment, the frantic look of "What are we going to do now?"

To Jamieson, the inequality of care afforded to pregnant women without Medicare points to a deeper gender inequality, where women are often expected to absorb the physical, financial and social consequences of reproduction in ways men rarely are.

"We can't simply lay the blame with the female because she's bearing the burden of the pregnancy," she says. "Women's health equality will occur when we expect and demand what men already have."

Then there are the women who decide to carry their pregnancies to term.

Some end up in front of midwife Brooke Higgs, who works at a different Sunraysia Community Health clinic. When I meet her there one warm afternoon, she's wearing medical scrubs with Wonder Woman cartoons printed across the fabric.

She alone sees about five pregnant women each year who don't have access to Medicare, many of them Pacific farm workers. They often come into her office well into their second trimester, sometimes into their third, without ever having seen a medical professional.

"Mum might not have had the blood test and might not have had scans. And so you're really thinking, 'Is there something going on that we've not picked up?'" Higgs tells me, sitting at the desk of her consultation room. "It just makes you very nervous when you're not sure what's going on."

Sometimes Higgs refers women to see specialists, particularly if there are suspected complications, but some don't go. As their midwife, Higgs says she's left "flying a bit blind", unsure about the risk delivery might pose.

"You just hope nothing will be missed … that everything will be okay," Higgs says.

Her clinic waives the appointment fees for patients who don't have Medicare. But "side services" — scans, bloodwork, the actual delivery at the hospital — can mean women still spend thousands of dollars to birth their baby. This pushes many into debt.

"Lots of them return to work very quickly after they have their babies," Higgs tells me. "I wonder about what kind of childcare access [they have], that would be my other worry… are they safe arrangements?"

The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which oversees the PALM scheme, last year issued a guidance document in 13 languages that outlines pregnant workers' rights.

A department spokesperson acknowledged that pregnancy and parenting under the scheme can raise "complex and sensitive issues" and that it had a team of "dedicated welfare specialists" to assist employers with managing "complex welfare situation