KEY POINTS:
National leader John Key says the Government must get suspended assistant police commissioner Clint Rickards out of the force, even if some sort of payout is involved.
Mr Rickards has been suspended on full pay for the last three years and it was revealed at the weekend he had been given a new $50,000 car by police.
The Holden Commodore, registered two months ago, is part of Mr Rickards' estimated $250,000 remuneration package.
Prime Minister Helen Clark this week said the situation was "odd", but the car was part of a salary package and there was little police could do until Mr Rickards' employment status was resolved.
Mr Rickards was suspended after the opening of an investigation into allegations by Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas that he and former officers Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum raped her in the early 1980s.
All three were acquitted but Mr Rickards admitted he had group sex with Mrs Nicholas.
It has been reported he is likely to face an internal disciplinary process over some of his sexual liaisons with Mrs Nicholas and his public criticism of the competence of the police investigation into the allegations by her and other women.
But Mr Key today said the Government needed to speed up the process and demand a prompt resolution.
"His actions don't warrant someone in the senior position he would be in and quite frankly the position needs to be resolved, Mr Rickards needs to move on," he said on TVNZ's Breakfast programme.
He said some kind of payout appeared inevitable.
"You have to find a way out and inevitably there's probably going to be a cost in that."
Options open to police include sacking Mr Rickards or negotiating a "golden handshake" settlement.
But Miss Clark said on Monday she did not think a resolution was too far away.
"I think the key issue now is when the disciplinary process, which is clearly going on comes to a conclusion, and one assumes that can't be too far away."
- NZPA
