The Covid Commissioner’s new role aims to stop people falling through cracks

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

The man who began his tenure as police commissioner three days into the first lockdown in 2020 will now leave for a prime public service job in November.

Coster will leave police after 27 years - but before the April end of his tenure as commissioner - to become secretary and chief executive of the Government’s new Social Investment Agency.

He told The Post that it was time for “someone else to bring fresh eyes and lead the organisation” but that although he was moving on from the uniform, his new job would be “from my perspective, it's on the same continuum as policing”.

“I think police spend a lot of time operating at the bottom of the cliff. It's everyone's aspiration for that not to be necessary. And so anything we can do to improve the way the system operates to address those complex issues - that's great.”

Coster is now trying to move to the top of the cliff.

The Social Investment Agency was set up by Nicola Willis as part of Budget 2024. It builds on former Prime Minister Bill English’s work to develop a data driven system to target and make resource-intensive interventions early in life to stop people falling through the cracks and ending up welfare dependent or in prison.

It was on hiatus during the previous Government. While a conceptually appealing idea, from November 11 it will now be up to Coster - in conjunction with his new minister Nicola Willis - to really work out how to apply this approach in practice.

“It's really important that I understand what the minister's aspiration for that is, and where she sees the Social Investment Agency being particularly focused.”

Coster, who applied for the publicly advertised job, says that his work in police gives him give him a useful perspective “because so much of our time is spent working with people who have complex social needs, and frequently people who have fallen through the cracks”.

He was praised in the House by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Monday - after having been derided by some then-opposition National MPs as “cuddles Coster” for a supposed soft-on-crime attitude, he has clearly impressed senior ministers.

“He has served with integrity over the course of a long career with the police, and I look forward to working with him in his new role,” Luxon said.

“I've got a range of strong connections across chief executives within the public service, so it does allow me to hopefully make really useful contribution to the way the system thinks about that,” Coster said.

That’s all in the future and still relatively unknown. But reflecting on his time as commissioner, Coster is clear: it was entirely shaped by the pandemic.

“The important overarching piece was the impact of Covid. I started formally in my role three days into our first lockdown, and Covid has in many ways defined my time in the role.”

The political train has moved on from Covid-19 and aside from clear political issue of inflation, few New Zealand politicians - who all supported lockdowns in some form or other - have been too keen to look too closely under the hood at the non-Covid consequences from the policies of those period.

Coster, however, is clear what the whole period meant for policing.

“We are still dealing with the tail of Covid in terms of its impact on things like youth offending, on family violence, any of our current issues were aggravated by that whole period.”

“I believe that it's going to continue for some time, until the country turns a corner economically. And, you know, we also see significant polarisation in our communities, which is part of a wider international trend driven by social media.”

He lists of a number of other achievement he was proud of during his time in the job. The shooting of constable Matthew Hunt early in his term saw a focus on training officers through the ‘tactical response model’, the growth in police numbers has also been among them.

He says the wide-ranging capability of police has been built up across areas such as organised crime, cyber crime, financial crime as well as more traditional jobs of police.

“There are many organisations internationally who look to New Zealand police for what we've achieved, including around crime prevention.”

Coster also said that the current economic environment - in conjunction with the tail of Covid-19 - continues to make the climate tough for law enforcement. He could already be talking with the imprimatur of either his current or future job.

“This has been, and continues to be, a challenging period in our history.

“In terms of economic environment, there is a direct correlation between what's happening economically and what's happening in terms of things like retail crime or dishonesty crime. So, you know, there's an absolute correlation there. The data is unequivocal.”

“Then, if you think about a period like Covid, which put people under a huge amount of stress in a whole range of different ways, left people feeling angry.

“Well that plays through into the violence that we see out on our streets or in homes and so policing is very much subject to the trends that are playing out in community.“

The new agency which Coster joining is one of five central Government agencies which are “responsible for coordinating and managing public service performance”. These include the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Treasury, the Public Service Commission and the Ministry for Regulation.

And as for his replacement, he says he is not involved and is confident in the executive team he leaves behind.

“My responsibility is really to make sure that the organisation is in good shape to carry on and to hand over.”

Correction: Coster will start in his new role on November 11, not November 22 as originally reported. Story updated September 25, 9.31am.