Shocking: man who joked about Pacific Island nations sinking doesn’t actually care about the environment

Absolutely shocking announcement that no one could have possibly seen coming from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton today, when he said that the Liberal Party has no actual emissions target policy and wants Australia to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

The alleged ‘not a monster’ who previously has joked about how much he doesn’t care about Pacific Islands nations having “water lapping at your door” completely stunned news stations around the country with the revelation that his weekly vague comments about saving the planet with nuclear energy were not actually sincere.

“How were we meant to know he wasn’t serious about emissions?” said every media outlet after uncritically pushing his talking points for years. “We thought we were just dealing with a guy who was simply saying experts were wrong and shouldn’t be listened to, which we of course used as the basis of all our coverage in the last 3 years because that’s how ‘balance’ works.”

“There was simply no way to know that the guy who has been against climate policy his entire career would be against climate action,” said one senior political reporter, “I mean sure he flew to Perth during the middle of a campaign just to say hi to a mining billionaire donor, but how could anyone have suspected he would put fossil fuel profits over the safety of the planet?”

In response to the announcement, ABC host David Speers has promised to make this weekend’s episode of ABC’s Insiders even more insufferable then normal.

“We normally try our best when dissecting Dutton’s talking points to make the show feel like viewers are pulling out their own teeth, but with an announcement of this calibre, I’m sure our regular guests can go above and beyond in the stupid infuriating takes they come up with.”