I hadn't really thought too much about that until I began looking backwards through the life of the man most of us simply know as JP.

Then I realised something, he seems to have been doing it all his life.

Before JP

John-Paul Honoré Langbroek's Australian story began a long way from Main Beach.

He was born in Assen in the Netherlands in 1961.

His father, Jan, was Dutch. His mother, Anne, American.

The family came to Australia the following year.

Jan became a state-school teacher, and teaching took the family through different parts of Queensland. There was Boonah. Later, Burleigh Heads.

Anne sold Avon.

JP would later remember travelling around the Gold Coast with his mother as she made her deliveries.

Anne later worked as a teacher aide at Sunnybank Hills State School.

It is a wonderfully ordinary beginning, from a migrant family finding its place and rhythm in Australia.

A father teaching, a mother knocking on doors, with their children watching on.

Years later, standing in the Queensland Parliament for the first time, JP would thank his parents for something that seems, looking backwards, remarkably important.

They had taught their children self-confidence, independence and importantly aspiration.

And by example, how to retain those things even when well-meaning people around them might discourage them.

Perhaps parents never quite know which of the lessons they teach their children will stick.

These ones seemed to have stuck and served JP well.

The Dentist

JP studied dentistry at the University of Queensland and graduated in 1983.

He worked in Britain before returning to the Gold Coast and building a career here.

For more than two decades, dentistry wasn't something JP had done before politics.

It was who he was.

There is a small memory from his daughter Bronte that tells this part of the story better than a CV ever could.

Dad came home at six every day.

They would run out to meet him as his car came into the garage.

There is something reassuring in the predictability of that image.

Six o'clock, Dad was home.

Then politics arrived and the six o'clock’s changed.

While pulling this story together, I wondered whether JP understood when he first stepped into public life just how much that decision would eventually ask not only of him, but of his family waiting at home.

I suspect like most who live life with such purpose that he did not.

The First Step Wasn't Politics

There is a temptation, when looking backwards at someone who has spent more than twenty years in Parliament, to imagine that politics must always have been the destination.

It wasn't.

JP said that six years of community service through the Surfers Paradise Chamber of Commerce eventually led him towards politics.

I think that distinction matters.

Before he represented a state he worked inside a community.

Before there were constituents, there were patients and community.

Problems that needed solving, people who wanted someone to listen.

Perhaps dentistry and politics aren't as different as they first appear.

When a person sits opposite you with a problem, you listen to them. Then you try to understand what is actually wrong, what the problem actually is.

That’s when you see the truth of their problem and how you can help them solve it.

From family to patients to community then constituents. It’s only the scale that changes.

The First Answer Was No

JP first contested the Surfers Paradise seat in a 2001 by-election.

He lost.

That could easily have been the end of the story. There was already a successful life waiting for him.

Dentistry. Business. Family. Community.

It would have been perfectly reasonable to conclude that politics had given him its answer.

No.

But JP came back.

Three years later, in 2004, he contested Surfers Paradise again.

This time he won.

One of the people he defeated, was sitting independent MP Lex Bell, who happened also to be one of JP's dental patients.

Politics, I think, can be a strange business.

Yet in his inaugural speech, JP publicly acknowledged Bell as an honourable man and thanked him for his service.

That tells me a lot about this man JP.

The Cyclone Arrives

On 18 March 2004, the new Member for Surfers Paradise stood to give his first speech in the Queensland Parliament.

He spoke about his parents, his electorate, his profession, and his family.

He described his wife Stacey as the calming centre of their household.

Then he described himself.

JP, apparently, had a tendency to “descend and depart like a cyclone.”

I like that.

Because by the time we reach the political JP, another description will appear.

Mr Nice.

The cyclone and Mr Nice are the same man.

Perhaps that is our first warning not to mistake kindness for a lack of purpose and drive.

JP also admitted something else that day. He was apprehensive about the adventure ahead.

There was no attempt to rewrite uncertainty as fearlessness. He was apprehensive, and he marched forward anyway.

Courage is as simple as that.

The Dentist Doesn't Disappear

Something revealing happened during JP's first year in Parliament.

The dentist resurfaced.

JP became the first dental surgeon elected to Queensland Parliament since 1938, when John Donnelly, the Member for Wynnum, left Parliament.

Within months, he introduced legislation seeking statewide water fluoridation.

Whether we agree with every policy position JP has taken over twenty-two years is not the point of this story.

What interests me is why he said he was doing it.

His professional qualification, he believed, placed a responsibility on him to use what he knew to improve oral health.

Knowledge created responsibility.

He knew something useful, and he had reached somewhere he could use it.

So he tried.

Years later, another member of Parliament told the story of a waiter named Chris who had once been one of JP's dental patients.

Apparently Chris remained slightly annoyed that JP had entered politics.

He had been forced to find another dentist.

Queensland gained a politician, but Chris had lost his dentist.

Life has a way of keeping grand stories in perspective.

Mr Nice

Five years after entering Parliament, JP became Leader of the Opposition.

The local dentist was now, theoretically at least, an alternative Premier of Queensland.

Politics began demanding more.

But suggestions began surfacing. Was JP too nice for the job?

Politics often rewards theatre, a stage where anger looks strong, aggression decisive.

Yes, theatre at its finest.

JP was encouraged to become tougher. His response was revealing.

Becoming more aggressive for appearance's sake, he argued in substance, didn't make an argument more rational or correct.

That interests me.

Because there is an easy way to survive inside a powerful institution.

Become more like the institution expects you to be. That would be the easiest path.

JP appears to have resisted at least some of that.

The cyclone still had energy.

He simply didn't believe he needed to perform aggressively to prove it.

No Way Back

Becoming Opposition Leader forced a much bigger decision.

Dentistry had remained JP's other life.

His profession, his expertise and his safety net.

It was a time of big decisions. He chose to let his dental registration lapse and dispose of his interest in the family practice.

After more than twenty-five years, the dentist was walking away.

JP said the decision was his, made with the support of Stacey and his family.

That moment matters.

Trying something new while preserving the road home is one thing.

Closing the road behind you is another.

JP had chosen.

Then it was politics’ turn to choose.

It showed him just how unforgiving this stage could be.

There Is No Handbook

Later in 2009, JP said something in Parliament that I suspect applies to far more of life than political leadership.

“There is no handbook for being the opposition leader. You must learn on the job.”

Think about that.

The dentist had spent years learning dentistry. There were textbooks, teachers, examinations, qualifications and established procedures.

Now he occupied one of the most visible jobs in Queensland politics, and there was no manual to guide him.

He spoke openly about managing himself so that the highs did not become too high and the lows too low.

He relied on people with experience he did not yet have.

He specifically acknowledged Lawrence Springborg for his counsel.

There is something worth retaining in that. Leadership isn't always knowing.

Sometimes it is recognising what you don't know quickly enough to learn.

March 2011

Then came the moment I keep returning to.

Campbell Newman wanted to move from Brisbane City Hall into state politics.

For that to happen, the leadership had to change.

JP stepped aside.

Just two years earlier, he had walked away from the profession he had practised for more than twenty-five years.

Now the position that had helped cause him to make that decision was gone too.

He must have wondered, even briefly, whether he had made a terrible mistake.

Perhaps he was angry. Perhaps he wasn't.

Maybe he went home to Stacey and questioned the choices that had brought him to this point.

I don't know, but it’s a very human inflection point when your aspirations are suddenly overtaken by the reality of others.

But I can also imagine JP sitting with the consequences of a decision that no longer looked quite as it had two years earlier.

When reporters came looking for his reaction, JP described politics as a “treacherous business.”

It was part of the job.

Lawrence Springborg lamented that Queensland had missed the opportunity to have JP as its “gentleman Premier”.

And then came the part that interests me most.

JP stayed.

Staying

That may be the easiest part of his story to overlook.

Political stories naturally concentrate on advancement. On winning, leadership and ministerial positions.

But sometimes character is easier to see after that advancement stops.

JP remained.

Then LNP won government in 2012, and he became Minister for Education, Training and Employment.

Three years later, the government lost office.

JP retained Surfers Paradise.

And then he stayed again.

One year.

Two.

Five.

Eight.

Nine.

For almost another decade, there was no ministerial office waiting for him.

There was simply the work, an electorate, parliament, community and the next election.

The People Behind the Machine

There is another clue to JP buried in one of his parliamentary speeches.

At the end of 2009, the Leader of the Opposition stood to thank people.

Politicians thanking politicians is not that unusual, but JP's list kept going.

Parliamentary attendants.

Security staff.

Hansard.

Library staff.

Committee staff.

Catering staff.

Cleaners.

Maintenance workers.

Switchboard operators.

Electorate staff.

The people behind the machinery.

He joked that Hansard had a remarkable ability to make politicians sound better than they actually were.

There is something revealing about who a person notices.

Titles make the visible people very visible.

Character sometimes reveals itself in whether you can still see everyone else.

Eventually JP came back to the people at home.

Stacey, Chloe, Bronte and Piers.

He described his family as his “rock of sanity”, reminding politicians what really mattered.

I thought again about six o'clock.

About a Dad coming into the garage. His children running out to greet him.

The rock of sanity was there well before any titles and accolades of a public stage.

Full Circle

In October 2024, Queensland changed government again.

Twenty years after JP first entered Parliament, he returned to government.

And the son of the state-school teacher became, once again, Queensland's Minister for Education.

This time with the Arts as well.

There is something satisfyingly circular about that.

A boy whose father's profession moved the family around Queensland now carries responsibility for the system in which his father worked.

The child whose American mother took him along while she sold Avon on the Gold Coast now represents part of that same Gold Coast.

The dentist who treated people one at a time now makes decisions affecting people he will never meet.

Life rarely travels in straight lines.

Sometimes, if you stay around long enough, it makes circles.

The Village

And through all of this there is Main Beach.

That isn't something we need to manufacture for this story.

The record stretches back years.

JP has carried Main Beach concerns into Parliament.

He has supported residents over questions affecting The Spit and the surrounding community.

The Main Beach Association has acknowledged his support.

And then there is our own small piece of evidence.

The Villager.

For several years JP has sponsored our Community section.

And edition after edition, he writes his community update.

It would be easy to dismiss that as one of the small obligations of being a local member.

Perhaps it is.

But after looking backwards through his life, I see it slightly differently.

Because there is a pattern here.

The migrant family that found a home.

The dentist who built a practice.

The Chamber member who became involved.

The candidate who lost.

The candidate who came back.

The new MP who brought his professional knowledge with him.

The Opposition Leader who gave up his old profession.

The leader who lost the leadership.

The man who stayed.

The minister.

The opposition MP.

Then, the minister again.

And throughout it all, the community.

He keeps showing up.

Maybe that is too simple.

But I have learned that simple things are often the hardest things to do consistently.

Showing up when everything is going well isn't difficult.

Showing up after someone tells you no is harder.

Showing up when the position changes is harder.

Showing up when there is no title attached is harder again.

And continuing to show up after twenty-two years?

That tells us something.

This Time

Another month has rolled around.

Another edition of The Villager, and another deadline.

As I give JP’s story its final polish, Claire and I are sitting in the back corner of a business suite, in the deep recesses of a Taipei hotel.

And, as usual, somewhere among everything arriving for October will be JP's contribution.

He doesn't know I have written this story.

I wanted it that way.

For years, JP has helped us tell the stories of this Village and wider community.

I thought it was time the community told one of his.

So when JP eventually sits down with the October edition of The Villager, perhaps expecting to find the familiar collection of people, places and happenings from around Main Beach, he will discover something he wasn't expecting.

Himself.

And perhaps he will wonder why.

The answer is actually quite simple.

JP, you showed up.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I notice simple things like that.

We all do.