Heather du Plessis-Allan: Mark Mitchell was thrown under the bus today

I feel sorry for Mark Mitchell. He's been thrown under the bus and made to look silly today.

But I think he was just telling the truth, and I suspect we’re all going to find that out in about two years time.

So what’s happened is that the coalition agreement between National and NZ First promised that we would get another 500 police officers in the first two years of this Government.

Recently, Police Minister Mark Mitchell has admitted it is probably actually going to take three years, because it’s very hard to recruit new police officers and the Aussies are nicking the officers we already have.

But Labour got him admitting that in the house yesterday. It hit the news as a story about a broken promise - which technically it is - and then NZ First's Chief of Staff chatted to National's Chief of Staff last night.

Lo and behold, Mark Mitchell got told off by Chris Luxon today for not being careful enough with his words.

And he had to walk all his comments back today, he had to correct the house, and go back to pretending he’s going to be able to get us 500 extra officers in the next two years.

I bet you- he will not be able to do that, and this will come back in two years as a broken promise story again.

The bummer here is Mark Mitchell was just being honest. He was just doing exactly what a decent politician should do.

If a politician makes a promise they can’t keep - and that happens all the time - at the first opportunity, they should clear up that they cannot keep that promise.

It's a smart political management thing to do, it resets expectations.

And it limits the damage. A broken promise will always cop blowback, but admitting it early makes that blowback much smaller.

I feel sorry for him, he was doing the right thing. Now the only way out of this is to get 500 extra officers in the next two years- or go through this whole story again in two years time.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.