He came into conflict with Prime Minister Stanley Bruce during the 1920s, and as speaker in 1929 refused to use his casting vote to save the government on a confidence motion.

[1] His English-born father had been transported to Australia as a convict in 1846, but became a successful businessman and public official, serving as mayor of Toowoomba and in the Queensland Legislative Assembly and Australian House of Representatives.

He was publicly endorsed by Prime Minister Edmund Barton,[4] but the government provided little assistance and none of its members campaigned on his behalf.

Groom was opposed by Joshua Thomas Bell, a conservative independent whose father had similarly been a colonial MP.

[6] His margin of victory was smaller than his father's had been, though still comfortable, and in celebration his supporters pulled him and his wife through the streets of Toowoomba in a wagonette.

[6] Groom joined the radical faction of Barton's Liberal Protectionist Party and his views were closely aligned with those of Alfred Deakin.

[10] In 1904, Groom supported Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader Chris Watson's amendment to the Conciliation and Arbitration Bill which would extend its reach to state railway employees.

[16] Although relatively young and inexperienced, he was one of the few Queenslanders considered suitable by Deakin and was also ideologically close to the ALP upon whose support the government depended.

He correctly anticipated that the states would eventually hand over their offices to federal control, but his attempt to appoint Timothy Coghlan as the inaugural Commonwealth Statistician brought him into conflict with Joseph Carruthers, the premier of New South Wales.

After the 1910 election, he became a strong opponent of Labor and attacked its establishment of a government-owned Commonwealth Bank and its attempt to gain the power to control monopolies.

Groom involved himself in attempts to deport "foreign" agitators, but due to his poor handling of these and other matters, he was obliged to resign in December 1925.

[3][1] In return for his resignation, Groom was elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives and presided from January 1926 to 1929, when he helped oversee the move of federal Parliament from Melbourne to the newly constructed capital Canberra.

[citation needed] His refusal to use his tiebreaking vote as speaker on a bill that would remove the Commonwealth from most of its involvement in conciliation and arbitration led to the collapse of the Bruce government, triggering the 1929 election.

His action was motivated partly by his views on the obligations of an independent speaker, but he also disliked the bill, and he still resented his forced resignation in 1925.

In a bitter campaign, Groom was eliminated on the first count, making him the first serving Speaker to lose his own seat at an election.

[citation needed] A member of the General Synod of the Anglican Church, Groom was knighted in January 1924 for his services to politics.