According to Rene Hidding, Tasmania’s Liberal spokesman for forestry, it is “insulting” to Tasmanians to inform them about the tiny contribution the forestry and logging industries make to that state’s employment. Presumably he thinks it would be better to deceive the people? For all of the analysis about what the collapse of the state’s forest talks means politically, there has been very little discussion about what its demise means for the Tasmanian economy. Maybe it’s because the answer is so simple; the logging industry is virtually irrelevant to the state’s economy.