Brian Rudman: Khartoum Place bureaucrats perform a General Gordon

Auckland's Khartoum Place is named after one of those disastrous last stands that British imperial spin-doctors managed to convert into a proud and glorious historic moment.

Back in 1884, instead of doing the sensible thing and retreating in the face of overwhelming odds, poor old pig-headed General "Chinese" Gordon decided to dig into the Sudanese desert and fight.

It was a bad move. Eight awful months on, his head was being paraded around the liberated town of Khartoum on a spike.

Tomorrow, the Auckland City bureaucrats on the losing side of the battle to remove the Khartoum Place suffragist memorial seem determined to replay the General Gordon moment, and go down fighting. They're fronting up to the urban strategy and governance committee with yet more plans to dicker with the layout of the controversial square.

One of the four proposals being mooted even revisits their rejected dream to "upgrade the entire space". That option involves removing the memorial.

General Gordon would have admired their foolhardiness given that this committee is chaired by Deputy Mayor Bruce Hucker, who just last week declared his support for the existing memorial, adding "and I have the numbers".

Nodding approvingly alongside as he said this were Mayor Dick Hubbard and assorted dames and other influential women.

Admitting the groundswell for retaining the tiles, the report confesses "the importance of the tile art to women's groups in its current location was underestimated.

"In light of this, options for keeping the tiles in situ need to be considered."

Having conceded that, project leader Cameron Rennie then recommends as the preferred option an "additional set of stairs [be installed] with art kept in current location and configuration".

Now, at the risk of being labelled querulous, where, pray, is this new set of stairs going to go?

No concept designs are provided in the copy that has fallen into my hands, but with the memorial tiles stretching across practically the whole width of the square, the only obvious place for new stairs, as far as I can see, is up and over the top of the whole memorial.

And while that might satisfy, in a literal sense, the public clamour to leave the monument in situ, it hardly respects the spirit of the campaign.

What's the difference between burying it out of sight under a stairway and burying it in Myers Park next to the brothel?

Not a lot.

The four options going before tomorrow's meeting are: 1. Tidy up the existing space; 2. Refit existing space with art and stairs kept in current location and configuration; 3. Additional set of stairs with art kept in current location and configuration; 4. Upgrade entire space.

Option 3, the new set of stairs, would "provide a sight line through to the [public art] gallery to enhance the connection between Lorne St and the proposed new gallery ... "

The report recommends the committee approve the completion of a proposed design for Option 3, which has already been started.

Nervously, it adds, "there is no guarantee that option three will work". If it doesn't, "it may be necessary to follow option two".

Never giving up, the report writer adds, that when Option 2 or 3 is put up for public consultation early next year, "the design with the stairs removed can also be made available to the public".

That harks back to a reference earlier in the report that "a design for Khartoum Place without the stairs and tile art is in part developed".

The bureaucrats are recommending that this design be finished (even though the politicians have agreed it's a non-starter) "for the purposes of public consultation, so that the public can debate the issue of the tile art from both sides".

Talk about digging in like General Gordon and failing to see the game is up.

Here they are recommending to the politicians that whichever option they select tomorrow, it should then be put out to public consultation alongside the rejected and discredited, "get rid of the memorial" option.

Why can't they get it into their heads that removing the memorial is off the agenda?

The politicians, led by the Mayor Dick Hubbard and majority leader Dr Hucker, have said it's a non-starter. So have a cross-section of women's leaders.

So have many Herald readers.

The obvious answer is to give the square and memorial a spring clean and then, for a change, look after it.