When Nationals politician John Anderson released a policy called Plantations for Australia: The 2020 Vision back in 1997, he had no idea how nightmarish that vision would turn out to be. Instead of creating thousands of hectares of environmentally friendly native forests and a thriving timber industry, one ASX-listed company has been left with a charred mess and no easy way of cleaning it up. This is a story of some of the worst government decisions in recent history crashing into the extreme heat of the 2019-20 summer. …Then came the fires. …The only options remaining now are to either burn millions of tonnes of trees, or to build the port and ramp up harvesting and trucking, which some say would damage the island’s eco-tourism credentials.