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A message from Lenore Taylor editor of Guardian Australia
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask whether you could support the Guardian’s journalism as we face the unprecedented challenges of covering the second Trump administration.
As the world struggles to process the speed with which Donald Trump is smashing things, here in Australia we wake every morning to more shocking news. Underneath it is always the undermining of ideas and institutions we have long deemed precious and important – like the norms and rules of democracy, global organisations, post-second world war alliances, the definition of what constitutes a dictator, the concept that countries should cooperate for a common global good or the very notion of human decency.
This is a moment the media must rise to, with factual, clear-eyed news and analysis. It’s our job to help readers understand the scale and worldwide ramifications of what is occurring as best we can. The global news-gathering and editorial reach of the Guardian is seeking to do just that.
Here in Australia – as we also cover a federal election - our mission is to go beyond the cheap, political rhetoric and to be lucid and unflinching in our analysis of what it all means. If Trump can so breezily upend the trans-Atlantic alliance, what does that mean for Aukus? If the US is abandoning the idea of soft power, where does that leave the strategic balance in the Pacific? If the world descends back into protectionism, how should a free trading nation like Australia respond?
These are big questions – and the Guardian is in a unique position to take this challenge on. We have no billionaire owner pulling the strings, nor do we exist to enrich shareholders. We are funded by our readers and owned by the Scott Trust, whose sole financial obligation is to preserve our journalistic mission in perpetuity.
Our allegiance is to the public, not to profit, so whatever happens in the coming months and years, you can rely on us to never bow down to power, nor back down from reporting the truth.
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As the Australian election promises rain down I can’t help but wonder: how much is a vote worth these days? 
Once, my father carried me into the surf. Now my arm steadies his steps back to the sea 
