The campaign hasn’t exactly been a barbecue stopper, but we’re two days out from the significant event of a federal by-election. This is to be held in Groom, which is centred upon Toowoomba in Queensland’s Darling Downs region, and will result in the election of a replacement for John McVeigh, who has held the seat for the Liberal National Party since 2016. McVeigh’s winning margin in 2019 was 20.5%, which you would normally think would mean Labor would sit the by-election out, but they have in fact done the election-watching community a solid by fielding a candidate. That’s more than can be said for One Nation and the Greens, with the by-election having attracted a meagre field of four candidates, the other two being from the Liberal Democrats and Sustainable Australia.
While an LNP victory is surely a foregone conclusion, the size of the swing will serve as a real world measure of how well the Morrison government is travelling, a particularly notable fact in these days of skepticism about opinion polls. It is also convenient that it will do so in Queensland, which has so often been the crucible of federal elections over the course of the present century, and which recently delivered Labor a morale-boosting win at state level. For more detail, I now have a complete guide to the by-election in business, and will be doing my live results reporting thing as the numbers come in on Saturday evening.
Groom, highlighted in green, within the state of Queensland.
Portrait of Jephcott.
Voters in the Australian  of  are scheduled to go to the polls in a  this week following the resignation of  MP  for family reasons.

Groom is located in the state of Queensland, and is centred around the city of . At the last , the Liberal National Party, Queensland's dominant conservative party, won this seat by over 70% of the , and since the seat's creation in 1984, it has been held by conservative political parties. 

Some political analysts considered this a foregone conclusion, with analyst Kevin Bonham having declared it on his blog as "Australia's most boring by-election", however Bonham noted the size of the swing may have been indicative of the dominant centre left 's general performance in Queensland. There was a 4.2% swing against the Labor Party in the state of Queensland at the previous federal election.

''Wikinews'' spoke to one of the four candidates running in the by-election, Sandra Jephcott, who is running for the  party. Sustainable Australia describes itself as a "independent community movement from the political centre". According to the party's website, Jephcott is a  and farmer, who has completed a veterinary degree from the University of Queensland, as well as a  at  and a Master of Science at . With ''Wikinews'', Jephcott discussed climate change, COVID-19, water security, and foreign ownership.