Outgoing Police Commissioner Andrew Coster says the police have “ready access” to the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) if its support is needed during the search for missing Marokopa man Tom Phillips.

During an interview on Q+A with Jack Tame, Coster was asked if he had considered asking the Prime Minister to instruct the armed forces to help in the search for Phillips and his three children.

Coster said: “In that situation, there is actually no need for an instruction to be given. That is very much at the highest end of a threat, where that situation would play out.

“Police has ready access, on request, to support from the Defence Force and I can assure you that support has been called on through the course of this operation.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, on walkabout in Auckland. Photo / Michael Craig

Coster told Tame he would not go into the details of that support but said “we have the support that we need”.

“I’m very confident the team there has been carefully balancing the risk of confrontation against the risk of ongoing inability to bring these children back.”

Phillips and his three children – Jayda, 11, Maverick, 9, and Ember, 8 – have been missing from Marokopa since December 2021.

Earlier this month, footage emerged of Phillips and the children, wearing camo gear and carrying large packs, tramping in remote central North Island farmland after a chance encounter with teenage pig hunters.

Police later determined the sighting as “credible”, saying this was the first time all three of the children have been sighted, which was “positive information”.

Coster will step down as Police Commissioner in early November to take up a new job as chief executive of the Social Investment Agency – five months before his term was due to end in April.

‘I lost a bit of sleep’

Reflecting on this time in the role, Coster told Tame the 2022 Parliamentary protests were “the one time in my career where I lost a bit of sleep”.

The anti-mandate occupation lasted 23 days and ended when police moved in, clashing with the protestors as fires burned around them on the Parliamentary green.

Fires break out at the end of the Covid-19 convoy protest at Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell

More than a third of the police staff involved in the riots were referred to support services to help deal with the emotional toll of the experience.

During the protests, officers were knocked unconscious, tore tendons and suffered dislocations in the wild melee of the protest, but the unseen mental hits were also widespread.

“I would wake up at 4am, mind racing,” Coster told Tame.

“That’s not that much earlier than I normally wake up but it was definitely a very pressurised situation, and that’s where the independence of this role really comes to the fore because only Police, the commissioner, will carry the responsibility for the way that situation is managed and whether we get it right or whether we get it wrong.”

Police officers in riot gear hold a crowd of protesters at bay during their operation to move bollards during day 17 of the Covid-19 convoy protest and occupation at Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Coster described the response from police regarding the protesters as “the most measured, professional, balanced approach you would see anywhere in the world”.

“The response that Police brought, I believe, gave us the best opportunity as a community of moving forward with a level of cohesion for a couple of reasons.

“One, if we had charged in there at the start, guns blazing, then we would still be managing the fallout of that in our communities today, in terms of the aggrieved people it would have left and they way they would respond to that situation.

“Secondly, when we brought response to resolve it with force, it was the most measured, professional, balanced approach you would see anywhere in the world.”

A review by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) found six instances of the use of excessive force by police during the 23-day occupation of Parliament in 2022.

All other uses of force were justified or reasonable, except for two other occasions in which the IPCA could not make a finding.

Coster told Tame police had only escalated “where they needed to, and that brought about the safest resolution that could have been achieved in that situation”.

“I stand by the approach we took.”

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.