Leonard William Stephan (born 25 July 1935) is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n politician. He was a National Party of Australia

National Party of Australia

The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...

 member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly

Queensland Legislative Assembly

The Queensland Legislative Assembly is the unicameral chamber of the Parliament of Queensland. Elections are held approximately once every three years. Voting is by the Optional Preferential Voting form of the Alternative Vote system...

 from 1979 to 2001, representing the electorate of Gympie

Electoral district of Gympie

The district of Gympie is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Queensland The electorate is centred on the city of Gympie and stretches north to Rainbow Beach and as far south to Pomona....

.

Born in Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

, Stephan was a farmer, Shire of Widgee

Shire of Cooloola

The Shire of Cooloola was a Local Government Area located about north of Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, Australia. The shire covered an area of , and was the product of a merger in 1993 between the City of Gympie and the Shire of Widgee, which had both existed since 1879-1880...

 councillor, and Gympie Agricultural Society president before entering politics. He was elected to the safe National seat of Gympie at the 1979 state election. He served as Deputy Government Whip from 1987 to 1989, and Government Whip from September to December 1989. He briefly served in the shadow ministry under Russell Cooper

Russell Cooper

Theo Russell Cooper is a former Australian National Party politician.He was Premier of Queensland for a period of 73 days, from 25 September 1989 to 7 December 1989...

 and Rob Borbidge

Rob Borbidge

Robert Edward Borbidge AO , Australian politician, was the 35th Premier of Queensland, and leader of the Queensland branch of the National Party...

 in the early 1990s

1990s

File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...

, serving as Opposition Spokesman on Regional Development and Forestry from 1990 to 1991, and Opposition Spokesman on Forestry and Administrative Services from 1991 to 1992, but had returned to the backbench by the National Party's 1995 election victory.

Stephan won his closest re-election in many years in 1998 against a One Nation candidate; he retired at the 2001 state election, at which the National Party lost Gympie to One Nation's Elisa Roberts

Elisa Roberts

Elisa Mary Roberts is a former Australian politician. Born in Sydney, she served with the Australian Defence Force at Victoria Barracks in Paddington from 1989 to 1993, and received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of New South Wales in 1996...

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