Politics and Purpose

A Study Group led by Kevin Rudd, Former Prime Minister of Australia and IOP Visiting Fellow

Room L166, Harvard Kennedy School 4:00-5:30PM

Too many political aspirants seek public office without doing the most important foundational work of all for their future careers. Namely to have asked themselves, and provided answers to the following three questions: first, what do I believe in and why do I believe it; second, what do I want to do about giving effect to those beliefs, what policies would I want to change and what would I want to replace them with; third, what can I do now to bring about those changes. The reasons these questions are so important is that together they constitute your moral compass for your future political career. Too many young people spend all their time on the nuts and bolts of "getting into politics" and too little time on why they want to be in politics. This is important personally because a political or public service career is full of ups and downs, successes and failures, of high points and disappointments. It's never smooth. It therefore requires resilience. And resilience in turn is built on deep ethical foundations on which you can rely when the going gets tough later on.