Under the pump: Are host farmers' workplace health and safety rights forgotten in Queensland's unconventional gas governance?

The co-location of unconventional gas (UG) operations within active agricultural workplaces raises critical questions about work health and safety (WHS) governance. In Queensland, Australia—where coal seam gas (CSG) is the dominant form of UG development—host farmers are compelled to accommodate industrial gas infrastructure on their land, often without explicit safeguards for their WHS rights, roles and responsibilities. This paper critically examines whether Queensland's UG governance framework sufficiently protects host farmers as workplace operators. Using a discourse analysis of four key regulatory instruments, complemented by an autoethnographic inquiry grounded in the lead author's dual role as WHS consultant and host farmer, we identify four core governance failures that displace WHS risks onto farmers without formal safeguards or recognition. These include legal invisibility, procedural exclusion, regulatory fragmentation, and the ‘absent presence’ of the state. We frame these systemic shortcomings as a neglected governance nexus—of people, place, and law—that demands urgent policy attention. This study contributes a WHS-centred perspective to extractive governance scholarship and underscores the need for regulatory reforms that account for the cumulative and psychosocial risks experienced in co-located agricultural and industrial workplaces. Comparative insights from international contexts, including the United States, suggest these challenges are globally relevant wherever resource extraction intersects with rural labour and land use. • Co-location of gas and farming workplaces poses WHS risks in rural regions. • Queensland's CSG laws overlook host farmers' workplace safety rights. • Analysis reveals legal gaps likely mirrored in other extractive jurisdictions. • Psychosocial hazards from UG co-location remain globally underregulated. • Autoethnographic method reveals lived risks from policy design omissions.