Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Coster did nothing wrong, but still had to go

In the end, I think Andrew Coster had to go.

Look, you realize he's won a big victory today, don't you? Cause it's a big admission from the Public Service commissioner today that Andrew Coster didn't do anything wrong himself.

He hadn't committed any personal wrongdoing and it's a big admission also that there was no cover-up.

And the reason that it's a big admission is because of the number of times lots of ministers and also the new police commissioner went out there in media and said cover up, cover up, cover up, and then also in some cases said corruption.

Now what I think this proves is exactly what I had intimated a few weeks ago.

Yes, this was a scandal, but it was not the A plus plus plus plus plus plus scandal that these guys were kind of racking it up to be.

That was politics. They wanted to play the game of the bad guys are out, we're the new guys, it's a new broom, that kind of thing.

I didn't rate Andrew Coster as a police commissioner. I think he was rubbish at that job, but I always thought that he would be good at running the social investment agency because he's the kind of guy that likes the warm fuzzies and the early intervention, which is what the social investment agency was.

It was never about hard policing.

He was about warm fuzzies, the Social Investment agency is about warm fuzzies.

So it is in a way a pity that the warm fuzzies guy cannot lead the warm fuzzies agency anymore.

But ultimately, like Brian Roach said, he had to go because even though he did nothing wrong, the buck stopped with him at the police, and he made a series of bad calls that meant none of us could ever fully trust his judgment again.

And he was going to be a political target.

Who wants to be the minister or the government that protects the guy that protected Jevon McSkimming, even if he's the guy who didn't know that he was protecting the bad guy?

And ultimately, we've probably got away lightly.

I didn't want to have to pay him $124,000 but that was the low end of things. That was his notice period. It was probably the very least you could pay him.

But count today as a small victory for Andrew Coster because he's cleared his reputation even if he's lost his job.

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