The Perth tradie: ‘Do I keep grinding through 12-hour days?'

The Guardian

19-03-2025

Brent Daylight knows hard work. For years, the former roof plumber put in long days under the scorching Western Australian sun but, when he couldn't find reliable workers, he took a punt on something new.
At 39, he remortgaged his family home and bought a business that installs CCTV cameras on construction sites across Perth, where builders are battling illegal dumping and a growing epidemic of copper and timber thefts.
Daylight, who lives in the highly marginal Liberal-held seat of Moore, also works night shifts at a mining company twice a week to keep the new business and his young family afloat.
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Although settled in Perth, he is a Jarowair man from south-east Queensland. Despite his workload, he says life is much better for him than it was for his parents and grandparents.
'All the elders in my family were removed from country and moved down to missions across south-east Queensland,' Daylight says.
With a family to support, Daylight's grandfather was forced to conceal his Aboriginality to gain employment.
'Indigenous Australians face such harsh stereotypes but there are plenty of successful First Nation businesses and I want to be one of them,' Daylight says.
It never really stops. Being a small business owner, we are constantly getting emails. Basically, I have to get all my work done in three days and then I also work night shifts as a fixed plant controller for BHP in the city twice a week – so I'm doing two jobs.
Day-to-day is just kilometres in the car. Yesterday, I started north in Yanchep at 7am and I finished more than an hour south of Perth in Kwinana, at 7pm that night. If the work is there, I work 12-hour days and just smash it out because it means, come the end of the week, I might get a day where I can get away and do something for myself.
In my spare time, when I'm not doing installs, I'm doing development on new camera poles so I can eventually compete in the commercial market.
Outside of work I'm normally either surfing or planning trips away. I try to get my daughters out camping up north or down south as much as possible.
They learn a lot being outdoors about fishing, surfing and doing things kids should be doing away from screens. It teaches them to appreciate Country and be respectful as we are visitors to this beautiful state.
There are a few things. My biggest stressor is cost of living, the price of food mainly – it is ridiculous – but also the falling Australian dollar.
I purchase my CCTV units from China, where everything is priced in the US dollar. So when the Australian dollar falls it really affects my bottom line. The cost to import stock now takes an extra two months to earn back from installs and rental than it did when the old owner was purchasing. Then, on top of that, builders don't always pay invoices on time.
I also think the price of housing is stressful right now, because we would like to buy a house that is on a bigger block to have more room for the girls as they get older.
I want to grow the business, but I don't want to take on more debt. So, I have to decide if I keep grinding through 12-hour days split between two jobs. The work is there, there is no doubt, but it is just about whether the timing is right. We want more time with family, more time in the water. But for now, there are bills to pay and a business to run.
I am optimistic. But I am worried about climate change and the future for our kids. It is a big pusher for us, in terms of political views and who to vote [for]. There is contradicting evidence about windfarms and solar and I'm not sure about nuclear energy. I feel like our time has passed now and, if we were going to get into nuclear power, we should have done it 10 years ago, like other countries.
This is a tough question – I lost my dad at a young age and was brought up in a single-parent home by my mum with my two sisters. My mum is the most amazing person in the world and would do anything for us kids. I believe if my dad was still around when we were growing up, with two incomes things would have been comfortable. That wasn't the case and we scraped by. Comparing that to what I have now with a two-income household and a business, I feel like we are living a pretty good life.
I don't trust social media for news, I don't believe anything I read on social media. ABC is my main source of news that I read when I'm at work. I read it online and I don't pay for any sort of news subscription. I like podcasts and I listen to a lot of business podcasts. I do listen to a lot of ABC news on the radio.
I have always been a real Greens and Labor voter. I don't like Peter Dutton – like the other week when he said that he doesn't feel the pressure to cut the [interest] rates, but he criticised the Albanese government for not doing enough to cut the costs of living.
And the fact that he said that if he was prime minister he wouldn't stand in front of the Aboriginal flag. Well, that is just rude. I don't think you need to be disrespectful to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I feel like he has come out trying to look like Trump in the last couple of weeks.
So, I will go with Labor at the federal election.