DEAR Big End Of Town Person, I read via your interlocutor, mystic channeller Glenn Milne ("Clear out dead wood or die, Coalition urged”, Opinion, 4/5) your forthright dissertations on what should and shouldn’t happen on the conservative side of politics.

However, I’m confounded by the inevitable question. If you are such a big wheel and so forthright, why can’t you give us all your name or are you just another aspirant with a dirty little barrow to push with big tough things to say like the school child who writes on the back of a public toilet door. Not that I can blame Milne: he’s doing exactly what the Fourth Estate should do when the goose turns up. Get them to lay an egg.

There are so many things in any political party at any point in time that need doing, and every time Delphic oracles such as yourself issue forth they seem to say the same thing: if you don’t do what I suggest, you won’t get any money. Even when you do take the advice, the delivery of the promised funds is still rather elusive.

In what you may suggest is my rather naive view, policies are primary and fundamental and determine the potency of the political personality rather than the other way around. I think this is what may have kept Winston Churchill in power, but you might have decided to go with someone else during the World War II because he was a little old for your liking. In my view, I would prefer to look for support and a reason for a nation to cast their votes on policy.

I believe in what I say so I put my name to it. But Mr Whomever You Are, and you will be a bloke, I challenge you to put your own name to your own work and let’s have a debate in an open forum.

Senator Barnaby Joyce
St George, Qld