{"id":26713,"date":"2002-03-04T08:47:09","date_gmt":"2002-03-04T14:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2002\/03\/04\/aussie-pm-likened-to-miserable-rings-character-2\/"},"modified":"2002-03-04T08:47:09","modified_gmt":"2002-03-04T14:47:09","slug":"aussie-pm-likened-to-miserable-rings-character-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2002\/03\/04\/26713-aussie-pm-likened-to-miserable-rings-character-2\/","title":{"rendered":"(Aussie) PM likened to ‘miserable’ Rings character"},"content":{"rendered":"

AAP BRISBANE: A prominent Labor politician has compared John Howard’s election tactics to a “miserable, enslaved and obsessed” character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.<\/p>\n

Opposition business manager Wayne Swan was commenting on the Howard Government’s use of the children-overboard affair to gain popularity before the federal election.<\/p>\n

Addressing the Labor Party’s regional conference at Nambour in Queensland at the weekend, Mr Swan spoke of the Government’s “self-abasement in the pursuit of victory”.<\/p>\n

He then referred to the character Gollum<\/a>, from the Lord of the Rings movie.<\/p>\n

“It’s made me think about what happens to those who will go to any length to gain one ring – those for whom anything goes,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It is this kind of obsession that made Gollum<\/a> into the creature he is – miserable and enslaved, but also extremely dangerous to those around him.<\/p>\n

Dangerous to anything standing between him and his prize – in this case, accepted standards of honesty and decency in public life.<\/p>\n

“It is always hard in politics to compete with people who are willing to say anything and do anything to achieve power.”<\/p>\n

The Government has faced accusations of dishonesty for falsely claiming that boat people trying to illegally enter Australia threw their children overboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AAP BRISBANE: A prominent Labor politician has compared John Howard’s election tactics to a “miserable, enslaved and obsessed”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-special-reports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-6WR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}