Voters in the Darling Downs are set to head back to the polls after the LNP’s John McVeigh resigned.
McVeigh was re-elected to the seat of Groom in a landslide victory at the 2019 federal election.
Groom is centred on Toowoomba and covers about 5,500 square kilometres of rural communities, mainly to the city’s south and west.
McVeigh stood down on Friday, citing the serious illness of his wife Anita.
“This has been an exceedingly difficult decision for my family and I and it is one that has not been taken lightly,” McVeigh said.
Anita overcame significant illness during 2018 but the family was shocked when she suffered further relapse earlier this year.
“I want to make it very clear that we are truly blessed that her health is on the improve again and it is now my family’s absolute priority to keep it that way,” McVeigh said.
“Hence the need for me to step down from the demands and absences of being a federal member of parliament.”
The electorate of Groom, bordering the western side of the Scenic Rim division of Wright, and its predecessor, Darling Downs, have only elected conservative politicians since the first federal election in 1901.
John McVeigh’s father Tom held the Darling Downs for the Nationals from 1972, through the period it changed names, until 1988. He was a minister in the Fraser government.
Afterwards it was held by Liberals Bill Taylor and then Ian Macfarlane. Taylor held the seat for a decade and McFarlane almost 12 years.
John McVeigh replaced McFarlane at the 2016 election. A member of the LNP, he sat with the Liberals and was a supporter of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who promoted McVeigh to cabinet in late 2017. He did not retain that position under Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
McVeigh had a decades long career, spanning from being a branch president of the Young Nationals to a Toowoomba councillor and a state minister under the Campbell Newman government.
McVeigh won Groom with a 5.2 per cent swing in 2019, securing 70.5 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
The by-election date will be set by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
