Bert Van Manen was born in Brisbane, Queensland, to Dutch immigrants. His father was a ceramic tiler. His family moved to Waterford when he was young. He was educated at Kingston, Waterford and Waterford West primary schools and at Kingston State High.[1]
In 1987 he married Judi, and they have two sons.[1]
Bert Van Manen was employed as a bank officer for 15 years, from 1983 to 1998, before running his own business as a financial advisor from 1999 to 2010.[2]
In 2007 Van Manen co-founded Vangrove Financial Planning with Andrew Cosgrove. He resigned as director in April 2012 but retained a 50% ownership; one month later KPMG administrators were called in when the firm collapsed owing creditors $1.5 million.[3]
Van Manen is on the board of the Dunamis International College of Bible Ministries, revealed in his maiden speech.[4]
Political career
In 2007, Bert Van Manen was the Family First Party candidate in the seat of Rankin. He received 3.53% of the primary vote in that election.
In August 2016 he was appointed to the position of Government Whip.[2] He has served as a Member of the Joint Statutory Committee on Law Enforcement; Joint Standing Committee on Law Enforcement; House of Representatives Standing Committee on Law Enforcement and House of Representatives Select Committee on Law Enforcement.[2]
He was endorsed by the evangelical Christian Dunamis Church, which provided church volunteers to aid his election campaign with "booth work, letterbox drops and many other things."[1][5]
In 2017, the Division of Forde voted "Yes" in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, with 61% in support of same-sex marriage. Van Manen had campaigned against same-sex marriage, and abstained from the parliamentary vote.[6][7]
In January 2018, it was reported that several changes to van Manen's Wikipedia page that included deleting references to his failed business, Vangrove Financial Planning, were traced to parliamentary IP addresses. A spokesperson for Bert Van Manen described the edits as having been "well-meaning."[8]
Journalist and former political staffer Niki Savva speculates in her book Plots and Prayers that van Manen may have been a key instrument in the 2018 leadership spill which removed Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister, as Van Manen was deputy Whip and a part of the Morrison Bible Group.[9] Van Manen's was one of six crucial votes that determined Scott Morrison to be the new leader.[10]
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