Family Affairs
On Saturday the 24th of March, 2012, John-Paul Langbroek had quite a cause for celebration. His political party, the Liberal-National Party, had just defeated Anna Bligh and her Labor government at the state election, winning a record majority of 78 out of 89 seats. John-Paul himself even snared the most voter support of all the candidates, with 72.93% of the votes in his Surfers Paradise seat. This was quite an incredible feat for a relative newcomer to state politics and for a man who 51 years earlier had begun life in the small Dutch town of Assen, 15 000 kilometres away from what would later become his electorate.
John-Paul was less than a year old when his parents decided that in order for their family to attain the best possible life, they would have to leave the Netherlands and migrate to another country. Both John-Paul and his mother found it very difficult to adjust to the harsh Dutch winter so they chose Australia, a country with a much warmer climate. Joined by hundreds of others, John-Paul and his parents began the long journey from Rotterdam to Brisbane, trapped inside a ship that promised a brighter future when they finally stepped off 6 weeks later.
John-Paul’s early childhood is a blur of relocating from country to country, from America to Papua New Guinea and then back to Australia, due to his father’s profession as a teacher and both his parents’ roles as missionaries in the religion of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. John-Paul’s parents had met at bible college and continued practicing the faith once they were married. They then chose to raise John-Paul and his younger sister, Kate, by its autocratic principles. Growing up, John-Paul never questioned the religion and the values it upheld. However, like most teenagers during adolescence he began to question whether some of the teachings that had been instilled within him from childhood were really as absolute as he had once believed.
These concerns only continued to increase as John-Paul completed high school and began his university education, studying to become a dentist. It was at the University of Queensland School of Dentistry where he would meet Stacey Smith, the woman who would later become his wife and mother of his 3 children. The two had met in 1982 when she was paired with him for training purposes. She was the (slightly) older, quick-witted dental assistant and he was the (slightly) nerdy, determined dentist. Although she was in a relationship at the time of their initial meeting, some months later they realised that they belonged together.
However, their relationship was not without its challenges. The guidelines of the religion meant that John-Paul was supposed to marry from within the church of Jehovah’s Witnesses. When it became clear that John-Paul was going to have to deny his love for Stacey he made a decision that was undoubtedly going to change his life forever. At 22 years old, John-Paul and his parents boarded a plane from Brisbane that was going to take them to the Jehovah’s Witness headquarters in New York. John-Paul had recently graduated from the University of Queensland with an honours degree in Dental Science and had told his parents that the move to New York was so that he could begin his life as a missionary for the religion. However, in the lobby of the headquarters, John-Paul informed his parents that he was abandoning the religion and moving to London to live and work as a dentist. Leaving his stunned parents in New York and flying half way across the world to London to begin life as an independent 22-year-old was the biggest decision John-Paul ever made; and it changed his life forever.
Six months later, Stacey joined John-Paul in England and the two lived happily in a townhouse with another couple. Whilst their weekends were often disrupted by the knocking of Jehovah’s Witness missionaries, sent on behalf of John-Paul’s parents, the couple managed to live a simple and happy life. All was forgiven within the Langbroek family by the time of John-Paul and Stacey’s wedding on January 3rd, 1986. For 20 years afterwards John-Paul practiced as a dentist and worked in a small but successful Surfers Paradise practice, which he owned and operated with Stacey.
In 1999, on the advice of a friend at a cocktail party John-Paul joined the Queensland Liberal Party and the love affair with politics began. Though John-Paul ran and lost in the 2001 Surfers Paradise by-election, by 2004 he had accumulated mass support. Throughout the campaign, John Paul worked tirelessly to prove to the people of the electorate that he would represent them better than their current member, one-term independent MP Lex Bell. Luckily, all the hard work paid off. John-Paul won the seat of Surfers Paradise and started his life over again – this time in a political sense.
John-Paul Langbroek is the Member for Surfers Paradise.
John-Paul Langbroek is the Minister for Education, Training and Employment.
John-Paul Langbroek is my father.
To me, he is the epitome of strength, courage and resilience. His story is one that displays each of these characteristics in their best sense and that is why I feel that it is a story worth sharing.
