In this excellent editorial you explained how a potentially explosive showdown between the NSW Nationals and the Liberals ended in a predictable fizzer as Barilaro backed down and capitulated to his Liberal Party handlers over the koala SEPP legislation.

Toole is a freshwater townie: a National Party MP whose electorate is on the western side of the sandstone curtain and who lives in town rather than living on the land.

OTHER RECENT LETTERS:

I have watched and been part of the community forums that Toole has attended, from the merger of Evans Shire Council with Bathurst City Council and his subsequent election to Bathurst Regional Council, his dual roles as the local state MP and Bathurst mayor and now as a minister of the crown - and what is apparent to me is that Toole doesn't really have a plan.

Really, everything he has been appointed to has been handed to him.

Everything he thinks he has been a mover or a shaker for - for growth of this city and the Bathurst electorate - was planned and executed by governmental departmental bureaucrats and developers.

There are no real manufacturing jobs in our electorate, the LPI has been all but gutted, the state debt recovery office in Lithgow has had major "restructures", even our hospital is heaving at the sides to collapse in on itself.

Toole does not have a plan. Toole, like most National Party MPs, is a low altitude flyer. Once he becomes the leader of the Nationals, he just won't know what to do.

In my dealings, both privately and professionally, with Gladys Berejiklian as Minister for Transport in 2015 as someone working to change the bus timetable in our city, by way of working in the corporate sector in Sydney when Gladys was the Treasurer and Minister for Industrial Relations and in my current role working with her and her department of P and C as the State Premier, something that sticks out to me is that the premier is both brilliant and ruthless.

They are two things that our local state MP and the MP for Northern Tablelands lack as individuals and potential leaders of the National Party.

The real fear for political parties trying to win regional seats is if the Nationals put someone like the Member for Oxley Melinda Pavey in as their leader.

She has the ability and the personality to go head-to-head with the Liberals and make some real change, unlike our local member, who can't conduct himself without a handwritten, hard copy playbook printed out by his staff.