Imagine if a company lost money selling something that it never paid for. Now imagine that company was owned by a state government. In an environment in which state governments and oppositions are either crying poor or crying waste you might imagine that such expensive mismanagement would create a bit of political heat. But the usual rules of politics don’t seem to apply to this particular government business enterprise. It might be because we are talking about such a long history of public support. It might be because we are talking about the logging industry. But whatever the explanation, the fact remains that Forestry Tasmania, which is 100 per cent owned by the Tasmanian taxpayer, has lost nearly half a billion dollars in the past two years.