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.

In the 2010 federal election, van Manen won the Division of Forde from the Australian Labor Party (ALP) incumbent Brett Raguse.

[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.

"[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.

[10] On 2 July 2019, following the 2019 federal election, van Manen replaced Nola Marino as Chief Government Whip in the House of Representatives.