He described the policy as “desperate”, though he said he would look at the details.
“We’d like to know a whole lot more about what that means by that and what the cost of it is going to be and what the employment loss is going to be and what the cost-of-living rise will be.
“No ifs, no buts, no maybes. We’ll examine this question, see what it means for the market, see what it means for employment, but we’re not putting thousands of people out of work just to satisfy a what you might call a clutch pearling green outfit,” Peters said, before correcting himself to describe the policy as “green pearl clutching”.