How much longer will Andrew Coster keep his job?

Friday, 14 November 2025

Former Police Commissioner Andrew Coster when starting his new job in the Social Investment Agency last year.

ANALYSIS: On Tuesday, Andy Coster would have been expecting to celebrate a year in the job as secretary of Social Investment. Instead he was put on leave and there is the possibility he might not go back to his job.

The question a lot of people will be asking in the wake of the Jevon McSkimming/IPCA report is why is Coster, the former police commissioner, still in a job at all?

Virtually every minister who has been asked by media, including the minister to whom he is accountable, Nicola Willis, have made clear - although without directly saying - that they have no confidence in the man who is now secretary and chief executive of the Social Investment Agency.

“Immediately upon having read the report, I rang the Public Service Commissioner to convey my concerns about its findings,” said Willis.

“He has conveyed to me that he will ensure that a proper process is carried out with minimum legal risk to the taxpayer,” Willis said.

The police minister says emails containing allegations about Jevon McSkimming's behaviour were kept from him by former commissioner Andrew Coster's office.

She said she was “shocked and appalled by the findings” and had made her view clear to Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche.

What we know is that the Public Service Commission said the IPCA report was given to Roche on October 24. The IPCA said in a statement on October 23 that the report would be released “in confidence to a very limited audience”. That probably would have included Coster. But he only went on leave the day the report was publicly released, which was on Wednesday - his one-year anniversary in the job.

Other than that, it has been treated as an employment matter.

So how exactly does this all work?

Although public service bosses are politically accountable to their ministers for giving good advice and giving effect to government policies of the day, they are actually employed by the Public Service Commission.

The Public Service Commissioner is their boss. It’s worth noting Roche was not in the public service at all when Andrew Coster was hired. He was appointed by acting commissioner Heather Baggott.

Coster has said that he will not be making comment until after his employment arrangement is sorted out.

This leaves mostly questions.

The first thing is that public service CEOs, like anyone else, sign employment contracts. Typically these contracts would have clauses by which employment can be terminated and types of termination that might result in a payment as well as types that do not.

Then Police Commissioner Andrew Coster faces the Justice Select Committee in 2022. Jevon McSkimming sits to his left.

For instance, for the former, if a ministry was dissolved or merged, a CEO might be made redundant and get a payout. For the latter, if someone is sacked for dishonesty or harassment or something similar they would likely not get anything except perhaps leave owing.

Though even in these latter situations it is not uncommon for executives in both public and private sectors to get payouts to save everyone from embarrassment, a long distracting process and details getting into the press.

Coster, however, is not in this situation. There is no evidence that he has done any wrong in his current job at all. Nor is it clear how the IPCA report has any impact on his current employment, save that it reflects very poorly on his leadership and integrity.

Once upon a time public servants were likely to have resigned if they lost the confidence of their minister, but that seems to be less the case now. Coster has obviously not done so. Perhaps he feels he shouldn’t have to, or perhaps he feels he has done nothing in his employment relationship in his current role to justify his sacking and so expected to be paid out in order to resign.

Coster was appointed for a term of five years at Social Investment, so it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he will be seeking to have the remaining four years of his contract paid out.

Information on his salary on the Public Service Commission website is incomplete but between November 11, 2024 and December 31, 2024 he earned $78,000. Pro-rated over 12 months that is about $557,000. So a four year payout might look like something north of $2.2 million.

The public outcry of Coster getting his contract paid out would be significant one would suspect.

Willis has said she expects the issue of his employment to be wound up quickly and with minimal cost to the taxpayer.

This is no doubt what Roche is trying to do.

But the legal avenues to do so might be pretty limited. And the risk of Coster suing the PSC if it does not follow an appropriate process could also be high.

So now we wait. Coster will surface at some point, a deal will be done and he may resign - although obviously nobody knows for sure as Coster has gone to ground and so far has refused to comment. But assuming he goes, it will be the most political negotiated exit in a long time.

Aside from that, however, hearing his side of what happened and how he views his comportment and role in it all will be fascinating.