I suppose I should thank Alyn Smith for demonstrating so ably that you can't not think of an Elephant.

He has been kind enough to draw public attention to the SNP Common Weal Group in the national press twice in the last couple of weeks.

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The SNP Common Weal Group is a group of SNP members and activists who have joined their democratic voices together to promote the policy proposals of the Common Weal think tank.

They are not an officially affiliated group, either to the SNP or the Common Weal, much like the SNP CND group. They don't get any funding from the party, Conference Delegates, or seats on the NEC.

They are however all very much SNP members and Conference Delegates with every right to have their voices heard in deciding what party policy should be. Or how its NEC is constituted.

This week saw the opening of Scotland's National Investment Bank which is intended to provide patient capital to the sort of projects that cannot acquire funding from traditional investors but that will be essential in transforming our economy into the carbon negative one we need to create if we are to avoid the catastrophic economic collapse that will accompany climate change.

The SNIB was a Common Weal idea that became SNP policy through ordinary members bringing it to Conference and unanimously deciding that it was something the Scottish Government should be implementing.

The SNP Common Weal Group is the brain child of activist Craig Berry and aims to coordinate the efforts of grassroots SNP activists in replicating that success with the many other great ideas contained in Common Weal's vast library of policy papers.

The Scottish National Investment Company and the Scottish Statistics Agency are further SNP-CWG wins that I have had the privilege of being involved in getting into the SNP policy platform and I look forward to their implementation in the next Parliament.

I'm proud to be a member of the SNP-CWG, just as I am to be a member of the SNP Trade Union Group and the Federation of Student Nationalists. Far from importing our obsessions, our policy focuses are home grown and the SNP is our vehicle just as much as it is the vehicle of the many other members of the party and we only expect to implement our ideas through persuading a majority of Conference Delegates that they are the right thing to do.

Should I be fortunate enough this weekend to be chosen by Conference Delegates to serve as Policy Development Convener I will start out by actually implementing the Regional National Assemblies I proposed three years ago at the last Political Education Convener hustings, to listen to the concerns and ideas of the grassroots activists who are the ones that do the hard work of getting parliamentarians elected.

I'll also make good on the idea of creating a central repository of all the resolutions passed by previous Conferences so there won't be any further confusion about what party policy actually is.

Furthermore I'll make a commitment to not shying away from the difficult issues, like Dignity in Dying, at those National Assemblies.

If the people of Scotland are to have confidence in the SNP to effectively manage a transition to independence they need to know we have the courage to face up to the big issues and the wisdom to do so without tearing ourselves apart in the process. I'm not sure pretending they don't exist and hoping they go away is an effective way to earn that sort of trust.

I wish my fellow candidates the best of luck in that contest and can only echo Alyn's hope that they will indeed judge us on our records.

Chris Hanlon is a candidate to become SNP Policy Development Convener.