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It is Australia Day, a Canadian mate, Krista, is now a citizen and politics is what matters most in 2007 ... Rudd looks to Carr spin man for media skill
Walt Secord … will take over the Opposition's media strategy.
BOB CARR'S former chief spin doctor Walt Secord has been hired by the Federal Opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, to try to replicate the Carr Government's tightly controlled and highly effective media strategy.

Mr Secord, who will join Mr Rudd's staff as communications director next month, worked for a decade as Mr Carr's communications director. Mr Carr was known for developing close relations with key members of the media and ensuring generous coverage by giving exclusive stories to selected media outlets. Mr Secord, previously a journalist in Toronto and Sydney, worked with him from 1995 through to his retirement in 2005.

Mr Secord, 43, was known for digging up dirt on Opposition MPs and overseeing ministers' public statements. During question time he would hand out media releases from a trolley that was known by the press as the Trolley of Truth. As communications director for Mr Rudd, Mr Secord will be expected to craft policies and messages aimed at winning back key seats in NSW. In The Latham Diaries the former Opposition leader Mark Latham, who was no friend of Mr Carr, recorded that "backbenchers [in NSW] … are not allowed to scratch their backsides unless Walt gives them the green light".
McKew impressed to the max