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Saturday, June 06, 2020

Michael Yabsley: Australia Debates: Communist Party China the New Nazi Germany?

Max Willis



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.




"I lived with a lot of denial for a very long time": Michael Yabsley.
"I lived with a lot of denial for a very long time": Michael Yabsley.

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 JonesJohn HowardMark LathamNick GreinerBob CarrThomas KeneallyAndrew 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."






Australia Debates: Communist Party China the New Nazi Germany?


A row Down Under as a prominent and well placed MP says some not-nice things about China.
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