If the Americans are as good at business are we believe, they will soon realise that these forests have far greater value for tourism than for logs or wood chips. Like the Japanese, they can set up a vertically integrated tourist industry here, knowing they have unique flora and fauna and a superb terrain as drawcards. Or they can send home the cash from clear-felling these wonderful forests until, of course, the soil is so depleted that only grass will grow on those steep hills.
Whichever way, what a clever country we are! Our Government has sold off native forests forever, which, in its opinion, have no intrinsic value other than the wood in the trees. In return it has made a one-off capital gain to help balance its books in the short term.
And we will never again have to worry about the management or control of that 170,000 hectares of our state, or about the protection of the water catchments within them, or about their native flora and fauna. Some already threatened by extinction anyway.
Bravo, that is economic rationalism for you.