The greatest insult imaginable to the intelligence of the average Australian voter was served up the other night by Bill Shorten on the ABC’s Q&A. When asked to put a figure to the cost of his carbon emissions reduction policies, Mr Shorten replied that this was a ‘dumb question’. The man who would be our next PM went on to assert that it was not possible to talk about the cost of climate ‘action’ without considering the cost of climate ‘inaction’.