During the 1980s and 1990s, they didn't come much more devoted in the Liberal Party than Michael Yabsley, the former member for Bligh and Vaucluse.
Indeed the dashing and debonair NSW politician appeared to have a bright future in public life, a happy marriage with wife Susie and two children. It was picture-perfect.
But nine months ago Yabsley was forced to "take stock" of the life he had built after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, and finally admit the truth he had long denied to himself and his family: he was gay.
"I guess like a lot of people in my age group, I lived with a lot of denial for a very long time," Yabsley explained to PS when asked about the new life he has created in Darlinghurst, which has set tongues wagging among some of his old political cohort.
While Yabsley has been open about his new life with friends and family for months, when PS approached him he asked for time to discuss the potential media coverage with his loved ones, conscious that while celebrating his new life it did not come at the expense of his old one.
The cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgery was such a major event in his life Yabsley admits he "faced my own mortality", a reason to pause and re-evaluate his life, and ponder the years he had left.
Last October Yabsley called an end to his 37-year marriage with Susie, to whom he says he remains close and speaks to on an almost daily basis, though he admits his decisions have not been easy on those he loves.
Yabsley left the picturesque Southern Highlands home Wombat Hollow that he and Susie have turned into a high-profile ideas forum where the likes of Alan Jones, John Howard, Mark Latham, Nick Greiner, Bob Carr, Thomas Keneally, Andrew Forrest and Scott Morrison have all held court.
Indeed the hip Darlinghurst apartment where he is happily ensconced these days, and in a new relationship with a man, is a long way from the tweed and pearls brigade that would converge at Wombat Hollow.
"Yes, we are very happy. It's early days for us, but the relationship is very comfortable and we are very at ease with each other," Yabsley explained, asking that his fledgling relationship with his new partner be spared the public exposure he once courted as a politician.
However, the months since his cancer diagnosis have been anything but easy, especially on his family. "My decisions have impacted a lot of people I care about. I have to be conscious of how this, talking about my life, impacts on them," he told PS, acutely aware that as a man in his mid-60s, there are not many role models when it comes to "coming out" in 2020.
"We had a pretty happy marriage," Yabsley said of his time with Susie. "But for me, it was not an authentic marriage ... and that had nothing to do with Susie, that was about me. I was not being an authentic husband."
"I guess it ... my sexuality ... had become the 'elephant in the room'. Having confronted my mortality I was at a point where I wanted to live the years I have left the way I truly wanted to, something I probably should have done 30 years ago.
"I feel significantly unburdened by that, but there is also a truckload of guilt about hurting people I care about."
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A row Down Under as a prominent and well placed MP says some not-nice things about China.
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Long before the coronavirus pandemic caused mass layoffs and more than 30 million Americans to file unemployment claims in a matter of four weeks, Michael Graetz, Columbia Alumni Professor of Tax Law and a former official in the U.S. Treasury Department, was worried that too many American households live paycheck to paycheck. “Economic insecurity, anxiety, and fear were already pervasive. Any shock to the economy or to the workforce was going to cause lots of hardship,” he says. “Of course, no one could have foretold how large and difficult this shock has become.”
In his new book, The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It, which was published in February by Harvard University Press, he and co-author Ian Shapiro (a professor of political science at Yale) analyze how the globalization of the workforce, outsourcing, and technological advances threatened millions of people’s livelihoods and contributed to widespread income insecurity before the pandemic. “When the book went to press in November, the virus wasn’t on the horizon,” says Graetz. “All the reasons we cite in the book for worrying about widespread economic insecurity are going to be made worse because some businesses are not going to reopen and jobs are going to disappear. We have a precarious workforce, and the economic shocks from the virus are making it much more vulnerable.”
TANK MAN: Short Film About Tiananmen Square Hero
On June 4th and 5th, 1989, the Chinese government violently put down the pro-liberty Tiananmen Square student protest. One man stood alone against a column of tanks, and for his extraordinary heroism became known as “Tank Man,” though nothing more is known about his identity. Some say he was arrested and killed, others that he is still in prison in China, and still others that he is alive and in hiding. Regardless, he has become a symbol for resistance against tyranny.Tank Man is a powerful short film (15 min.) dramatizing events leading up to his moment of extraordinary courage. He is little known in China, where all images of him have been erased and all mention of him banned. This film does him some small justice.
In The Wolf at the Door, Graetz and Shapiro argue that maintaining the status quo is perilous and immoral. “It is essential that society help people who are left behind or who are in danger of it,” they write. “Otherwise these people may well reject the social contract and succumb to the poisonous snake oil peddled by political charlatans.”
