Andrew Coster: From top cop to the face of social investment

Friday, 21 March 2025

Andrew Coster looks refreshed. Dressed in a crisp dark grey suit and sporting a fresh beard, he could be a different man to the one who stepped back as the country’s top cop last year.

But while he may have hung up his police blues for the final time, Coster says his new job as the chief executive of the Social Investment Agency (SIA) is more similar to his previous role as Police Commissioner than might initially meet the eye.

“This work feels like a continuation of the same mission. Police spends a lot of its time at the bottom of the cliff of social failure. This is about trying to get the settings right so people don’t come off that cliff,” Coster says.

The SIA is a Government agency that uses data and analytics to advise the Government on how to make better decisions about where to allocate resources for social welfare programmes in a cost-effective way.

Essentially, it uses the wealth of information at the Government’s fingertips to decide when to step in, early in life, to stop people falling through the cracks and ending up welfare dependent or in prison.

“At the heart of so many of the things that we grapple with - whether it's youth offending, suicide, family violence - are missed opportunities to intervene early that could have made a difference for those people and ultimately the country,” Coster explained.

And it is precisely these opportunities that, as head of the SIA and Secretary for Social Investment, he plans on utilising.

The rebirth of the Social Investment Agency

Long gone are the days when Coster would front press conferences to answer questions about the police response to the Parliament occupation or the latest police bust. Instead, the work of the SIA largely happens behind closed doors in an office on Lambton Quay where data rules the roost.

First created by former Prime Minister Bill English but later diminished under Labour, the SIA is a hallmark policy of the National Government.

English summarised the approach when, as a guest lecturer in 2015, he told Treasury that while the system worked well for some people, the way the social service system was set up was preventing meaningful differences being made to the lives of people with multiple, interdependent problems.

“This isn’t because people are slack or lazy – it is just that these families have really different and complex lives, and so need a different and more bespoke approach,” English said then.

This is precisely the philosophy that founded the rebirth of the SIA under the current Government with Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis announcing the agency would be centralised and given a new mandate from July of last year. At that time, Willis said the Government’s investment of $70b a year into social services wasn’t seeing the desired outcome.

“So we’re taking a different approach. We want to look beyond good intentions in our policy-making and use hard evidence to invest in what works,” she said.

Coster, four months into the role, is “enjoying the challenge” is in the thick of preparing advice for ministers to secure Cabinet approval.

While he wouldn't be drawn on what this advice will actually be, after spending the first weeks on the job meeting with people from communities, the social sector and NGOs, he has a “good sense of where some of the opportunities lie”.

One such opportunity could be for those who have experienced generational problems.

“Those will be expressed in different ways. It could be kids who don’t do well at school, it could be police attendance for family violence or youth offending, it could be unemployment or long-term reliance and dependency on state support.

“Every generation is a new opportunity to make a difference with that. And I think that’s an opportunity that we haven’t always been that good at taking as a country.”

He expects Budget 2025 - due to be delivered by Willis in May - will have “something of significance” for social investment.

The SIA is a much smaller operation than Coster is used to. He was once in charge of 15,000 police staff sprawled across the country. These days he can fit all of his reports into one room. At the end of February it had 27.7 permanent full-time equivalent staff (FTE) and 19.8 fixed-term FTE in Wellington - 47.5 FTE. That included three economists, 12 policy staff, six data scientists, and other roles including specialists and corporate services.

It’s also a new experience reporting directly to Willis.

“She’s passionate about making a difference, right? And obviously it’s really helpful when you’re talking about investment to have the Minister of Social Investment also the Finance Minister. That’s a great combination.”

The success metrics the SIA will be working to are also yet to be determined, with Coster saying those will be part of the papers being presented to Cabinet.

Fundamental to the SIA’s work is the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) - a colossal trove of information held by the Government that has anonymised data about virtually every New Zealander, and millions more who have lived and died here.

If you wanted to know what happened to children after they were subject to an abuse notification from Oranga Tamariki, for example, the IDI could enable you to follow each child’s government interactions in the years afterwards.

How many went to prison, or went on a benefit? At what age did they have children of their own? How much did each of those interactions cost the state?

The thought then would be that through identifying trends amongst a cohort of the population, the Government can provide targeted intervention into the lives of the most vulnerable.

This approach, however, isn’t without its criticisms, with some warning it increases the power of the state over its citizens.

A work in progress: The Social Investment Fund

Another challenge Coster now faces is getting the Social Investment Fund off the ground. In May, Willis announced the establishment of the Fund, which will be managed by the SIA to directly commission services for the vulnerable.

While the Fund isn’t yet up and running, Willis said it would start with a “modest” investment. In 2024, $50.5 million was set aside in the Budget for the expansion of the SIA and the establishment of the Fund, but how this was distributed isn’t yet clear.

“The Fund will differ from the traditional way the Government spends money in the social sector. Typically, funding is undertaken through various government agency silos, whereas the Fund will operate more closely to a traditional investment fund.

“I would expect it to have a portfolio of investments ranging from innovative, more experimental investments to more conservative investments,” she said.

At the moment, the SIA is still operating as a policy house and doesn’t have the ability to disseminate funds, but Coster says the Fund is expected to start investing this year.

Importantly, the Fund won’t replace other social welfare programmes that are being funded through individual agencies, such as Oranga Tamariki or the Ministry of Justice.

Willis added that all decisions about the Fund will be part of the Budget 2025 process.

The ‘Covid Commissioner’

Dubbed the “Covid Commissioner' for his role in steering the police force through the pandemic, Coster became Police Commissioner just three days into the first lockdown in 2020.

He had an extensive policing career that spanned 27 years and saw him work in senior leadership positions and as a commander of an armed offenders squad, but last September Coster announced he was stepping down before the end of his five-year contract.

It had been an unrelenting tenure for Coster as Commissioner, with his comments about the philosophy of “policing by consent” making him a political target. In 2021, then-National justice spokesperson Simon Bridges called him a “wokester”, while commentators nicknamed him “cuddles Coster” for what they said was his soft-on-crime approach.

Police Minister Mark Mitchell later said he had disagreed with the direction policing had taken under Labour, and wrote Coster an open letter setting out his “expectations”.

But in the end, the publicly advertised role as chief executive of the SIA was “a marvellous opportunity” that Coster couldn’t look past.

“I felt like I did all of the things I wanted to. I had reached the point where it was a good time to allow someone to come in with fresh eyes. It felt like a natural time.”

So, he asked himself: “Can I see the opportunity to make the kind of difference that I want to make? And the answer to that is absolutely yes.

“And this is a particular window of opportunity with a Government that really wants to make a difference in that space, and so the timing was right to take that opportunity on […] Whilst I loved my time with the police, it’s not the only opportunity there is to serve in that way.”

But, Coster warned, there “is no magic wand” for solving the complex social issues that he now must tackle head-on. Instead, it will be a case of lots of incremental improvements that result in big differences to the lives of those in need.