When a political party starts throwing around numbers with more zeros than Peter Dutton had votes left in Dickson, you know you’re not getting economic analysis, you’re getting a con job. The Coalition’s $9 trillion net zero scare campaign is the latest instalment in a decades-long franchise of climate hysteria, from Whyalla’s promised obliteration to the $100 lamb roast that never arrived. But this time, the real cost is the one they never mention: the price Australians are already paying for a lost decade of delay, obstruction and weaponised ignorance.