Casey Briggs

It's a pleasure to be with you on a very big day in politics.

Yeah, we normally say the political consequences, the national implications of by-elections are pretty small, right?

Because the government's not on the line.

There are lots of different issues, lots of different candidates.

In this case, Labor's not even contesting this election.

So we're not getting the sort of true picture of the national support of any parties here.

But having said that, this is clearly a more important by-election than we've seen in a very long time in Australia because it's this important test to see how our voters, particularly on the conservative side of politics and particularly in regional parts of Australia, thinking about their options when it comes to voting.

elections.

One Nation is desperate to prove itself after more than one in five people voted for One Nation in South Australia's election in March.

They won four lower house seats in that election.

One Nation's not desperate to prove that it can win a federal lower house seat.

If it does, then this will be its first ever lower house electoral win at the federal level.

And so that would be a very significant moment.

But it's such a sort of

complicated contests, Ruby, because you've got this independent, Michelle Milthorpe, taking a second crack at this seat.

She came within about 6% of winning this seat, came closer to winning the seat than Labor has in 50 years.

She now would need to tap into the remaining, find more people to pull into her camp, while the Liberals and Nationals coalition partners are also going at this election and competing against each other.

But everything that we're hearing out of the leadership of the two parties is sort of suggesting that they're feeling pretty pessimistic about their chances.

I mean, this is a seat that the Coalition's always held.

It's never been anything other than a Liberal or a National seat since it's been created in 1949.