Brent Mail

Full time pro photographer, film maker and story teller from East Coast of Australia (originally from South Africa).

[Brent Mail @brentmailman]

Been reviewing my photos from Botswana (Okavango delta) as we plan the next trip for July next year and I'd forgotten how many great images I had taken. I've got some new ones to share plus stories - my good friend Johny has been editing some of these shots. Videos to follow.

[Mark Ogge @MarkOgge]

You may have thought you were voting for @AustralianLabor and then it turns out they’re owned by foreign owned gas corporates.

Our democracy has been hijacked by corporate lobbyists.

[Evan @EvanWritesOnX]

I am surprised how my tweet below entered the political spheres of Australians.

It means that many Australians actually care about their country. But if you want to do something about it, the first thing to understand is that the answer is not the other party.

The two parties run the visible layer. The operators underneath is the same regardless of who is in office.

Same mining multinationals. Same four banks. Same supermarket duopoly. Same media owners. Same property speculation engine. Same gas exporters paying almost no resource rent. The faces rotate. The arrangement does not.

So voting harder for Labor when the Liberals disappoint you, or harder for the Liberals when Labor disappoints you,

is not resistance. It is the trap.

It is the pressure-release valve doing exactly what it was built to do.

The way to move the operators in Australia, is how you move any operator in any country.

Stop voting tribally.

Strengthen the cross bench. Vote for community independents and minor parties willing to put structural questions on the table that the majors have agreed never to discuss.

A senate full of crossbenchers extracting concessions is worth more than another majority for either side.

Learn who owns what.

Find out who owns your bank, your supermarket, your toll road, your energy retailer, your superannuation, your media.

Most Australians have no idea how much of the country routes back to a small handful of foreign asset managers and resource multinationals.

Once you see it, the arguments between the parties stop looking like a contest and start looking like theatre.

Build parallel structures. Move your money to a credit union or mutual bank. Buy from local cooperatives where you can. Read independent media. Put solar and battery on your own roof so you stop buying back your own gas at a markup from the people who exported it.

Demand specific reforms, not vague good intentions.

Ask every candidate, federal and state, whether they will support a real Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.

Whether they will support a Norway-style sovereign wealth fund built on actual resource royalties.

Whether they will support ending negative gearing and the capital gains discount.

Whether they will support breaking up the media monopolies.

Whether they will support foreign investment screening with teeth.

Whether they will support rebuilding domestic refining capacity and downstream processing of the minerals that's shipped out raw.

Vote on the answers. Politicians respond to specificity.

They absorb and neutralise vagueness.

Tell the truth in your daily conversations.

The deepest defense of the system is the conditioning that tells Australians their own sovereignty over their own resources, their own currency, their own land and their own future is the unrealistic option.

Norway did it. South Korea did it. Singapore did it. Australia chose, repeatedly, through both parties, not to. That is a choice.

Choices can be made differently. Saying so out loud, in private and in public, in conversations with family and friends and colleagues, slowly breaks the spell.

Australia is managed. That is the bad news and that is also the good news.

Anything that can be managed can be unmanaged.

But not by waiting for the next election to deliver a saviour from inside the same recruiting pipeline that produced the current arrangement.

The change starts when enough citizens stop voting for the marketing departments and start asking who actually owns the building.

[Brent Mail @brentmailman]

Nobody Is Buying THIS Anymore And They Know It | Punters Politics https://t.co/9geYZbaSkg via @YouTube

[Brent Mail @brentmailman]

This is the photocritique website I've been working on for 2 years now, its fun. Brent
I scored 3.5/5 on my sports photo! Get your free AI critique at https://t.co/fQAhmv0Yi4 📷 https://t.co/0KP7kAUDlm

[the Juice Media @thejuicemedia]

Santoss has made an ad for the 2026 Tour Down Under, and it's surprisingly honest and informative. 🚴‍♀️🚴‍♂️🚴

#Santos #TourDownUnder #auspol

👉We're on Patreon: https://t.co/gHLr8lfaQ2

[Molly Ploofkins @Mollyploofkins]

Man conducts regime change in his neighborhood in the spirit of Trump's takeover of Venezuela

[Punter's Politics @punterspolitix]

LEAKED footage of an internal meeting between the Australian government and Adani coal corporation. If you're wondering exactly how australia keeps doing really dumb deals.

[Punter's Politics @punterspolitix]

Here we go again, Australia's biggest tax bludgers with their hand out again. And they KEEP ON getting the cash from our government 🤦they make billions, we pay for the clean up, great deal..more them. 🙄 Thanks to a punter for the chevron shirt.

[Mark Ogge @MarkOgge]

Did you know the Australian government’s decision to approve the 45-year extension of West Shelf gas export terminal is the greatest giveaway of Australia’s resources ever.

https://t.co/TcK10wVugO

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Don’t take instruction on how to live your life from a stark raving mad society.

This civilization is sick. It is genocidal. It is ecocidal. It is omnicidal. We are ruled by psychopaths, while the best among us are relegated to the fringes of the fringe. We are hurtling into totalitarianism and armageddon at breakneck pace while our attention is aggressively pulled toward the vapid and the inane.

You should share none of the values and priorities of this freak show. You should not let any aspect of this dystopia inform your decisions regarding who you should be and what kind of life you should live.

In this warped and twisted madhouse, we are trained to believe that “success” looks like making a lot of money, earning large amounts of esteem and adoration, having a certain body type, living in the right kind of neighborhood in the right kind of house full of the right kind of products to impress the right kind of people. We are trained to believe we need to rack up all kinds of accomplishments, academic achievements, promotions, impressive stories, social ascendence. We are trained to believe we must attract a certain type of partner who will be approved of by everyone whose approval we crave.

If we cannot achieve these goals, we are trained to believe we should feel bad about ourselves. That we don’t deserve happiness. That we should either spend our time stressing and striving for worthiness as defined by our crazy civilization, or go and join the ocean of miserable failures who couldn’t win the capitalism game and sedate ourselves with alcohol and entertainment waiting for death to carry us into the nothingness where we belong.

This is clearly insane. It’s a stupid game with stupid prizes. The only reason anyone takes it seriously is because we were raised and taught how to live by people who take it seriously. Our parents have been indoctrinated into the power-serving worldview that has been forcibly imposed upon the denizens of the empire, and we want to make them proud. Our friends, families and acquaintances have been likewise brainwashed, and we want to impress them.

But to do so is to take lessons on how to live from a collective disease that is pointed at misery and dysfunction. It is impossible to lead a truly fulfilling life while also trying to live the way the people around us think we should live, because the society which shaped their ideas about how we should live is insane.

If you want to really live an awake and inspired life, you’ve got to blaze your own trail. You’ve got to unlearn everything you’ve been told about what a life properly lived would look like, and write your own rules. Because the rules everyone else has been playing by were written by madmen.

Find your own truth. Set your own values and priorities. Define your own idea of success. Define your own idea of sanity. Consider the possibility that just being present for the beauty of each moment on this wonderful planet is worth more than anything the imperial insane asylum has to offer you. Consider the possibility that your very next breath, deeply relished, would be enough.

We are destroying our planet and driving every living organism toward annihilation. The status quo has failed as spectacularly as anything could possibly fail. The old ways of doing things plainly do not work. So try some new ways.

Be different. Be strange. Be a freak. Do everything the wrong way. Disappoint your parents. Fail to live up to your potential. Transgress your family doctrine. Anger whatever gods you were taught to believe in. Nothing anyone has done has worked. It is therefore necessary to travel off the beaten path.

The world won’t get better until humanity changes its ways. Humanity won’t change its ways if it keeps insisting on trying the same failed approaches over and over again. Our survival as a species depends on diverging from our patterns.

Maybe we’ll succeed in surviving, and maybe we won’t. But at the very least we can rescue ourselves from spending one more day on this amazing blue world trying to live by the rules of lunatics.

[Rex Patrick @MrRexPatrick]

Electricity prices have risen today. Why? Gas sets the electricity price and the Government has put the gas cartel’s wants ahead of Aussie consumer and business needs. It’s OUR gas. #auspol

[🌏 Zali Steggall MP @zalisteggall]

🚨 Labor has delivered on the Coalition’s promise — approving Woodside’s gas extension in just 30 days.

This carbon bomb undermines any serious commitment to net zero.

A climate betrayal: billions of tonnes of emissions, a disregard for marine life & cultural heritage. #auspol

[Brent Mail @brentmailman]

@Zhuk_live The visual spark for me, got to resonate. Your work is beautiful

[Punter's Politics @punterspolitix]

NSW is looking at increasing camping fees in national parks. Many countries around the world ensure access to nature, is a protected right and remains accessible to everyone. What kind of country do we want to live in?

[Mark Ogge @MarkOgge]

We need to make the fossil fuel corporates causing this pay the massive costs of this, or we will.

Support the Australia Institute’s climate disaster levy on coal and gas exports 👇

https://t.co/lftTl10bIy

[Mark Ogge @MarkOgge]

If you think the fossil fuel corporates making floods more frequent and extreme should pay the costs, instead of YOU, support the Australia Institute’s levy on fossil fuel exports.

https://t.co/18QgRQA3XM

[David Pocock @DavidPocock]

The great gas con continues.

Major parties claim 🇦🇺’s running out of gas - & that 🇯🇵 & 🇰🇷 need our exports for “energy security”

Truth is we’ve got plenty of gas. It's a gas export problem, not supply problem.

We get higher prices, 🇯🇵 companies get richer.

Who’s benefitting?

[Christine Milne AO @ChristineMilne]

Here we go again.. floods in NSW described as ‘once in 500 years’ event. Just stop it!!! Tell the truth. We are living in an age of rapid global heating. Extreme weather events are new normal. Pretending that floods and storms are out of blue is lying to the community. #auspol

[Punter's Politics @punterspolitix]

You pay more tax than them! And now they know that we know 😉 cos they can see the billboard from every floor of their huge office tower on the middle of Perth! Time politicians sort this one out hey? I'm tired of doing the heavy lifting for those bludgers. #auspol