Brian Rudman: Robbie's going to his right place ... now, what about the rubbish bins?

Mayor Robbie's days in purgatory are numbered. Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard and Penny Sefuiva, chairwoman of the arts, culture and recreation committee, agree that the statue of Auckland's longest-serving mayor should be moved to its planned place of prominence in front of the Town Hall apex.

Which is great news. After my column last Friday recalled how an anti-Robbie faction on the last council forced the statue of one of our most visionary modern civic leaders into a place of obscurity, Mr Hubbard popped out of his office for an on-site examination and agreed it "should be up in front of the Town Hall ... where it was planned to go".

"I don't accept the argument you shouldn't put one mayor in too prominent a position because it degrades the memory of other mayors.

"Mayor Robbie was iconic. Right through the election campaign Robbie came up time and time again. Mayor Robbie and vision, the two words were linked."

As for art works on the move, I'm starting to suspect that the art collective known as "et al", famous for its braying dunnies and other weird installations, has taken over the dust-bin department of Auckland City Council and expanded into street art.

It's the best theory I've come up with so far to explain the peripatetic behaviour of the Ponsonby and Herne Bay rubbish tins.

I stumbled across this work in progress one morning a couple of weeks ago when I arrived at my bus stop to discover a decrepit, secondhand pebble-encrusted bin plonked on the footpath beside the timetable sign, slap bang where we queue to enter the bus.

Oddly, it was sitting on a newly cut square hole in the pavement, one too small to accommodate the bin's fat round bottom.

What gives, I asked the Auckland City spin doctors.

Congratulations, came the reply, Ponsonby and Jervois Rds had won "50 brand-new bins". Another 50 old ones were there temporarily.

The new holes were for the new bins, but if the positioning "is going to cause difficulties in accessing the bus, then the new bin will be resited".

The next morning as I waited for the bus, along came two trucks and four workers, one of whom set about moving the hole to the front left side of the bus stop.

Then the bus arrived and I had to depart.

But not before noting that one truck was piled high with cardboard boxes, presumably full of square-bottomed new bins.

At work, an email defending the just-discarded kerbside site awaited.

"We believe the new bin in its planned position will not interfere with people getting on the bus.

"We purposely site bins near where people get on so they can throw their rubbish in as they climb aboard."

I could hardly sleep that night wondering what was in store for me the next morning.

I should have taken the household scraps with me, for when I got there we had two bins, one new, one old.

And so things remained until last Monday when I turned up to discover the stop totally binless.

The council spin doctors explained this latest development thus: "Normal bus stop bin placement is made as close to the head of the bus stop as possible. However, in this case there were some limiting factors for the placement of the bin.

"Placing the bin at the head of the bus stop would have interfered with passenger boarding, visibility for residents exiting their driveway, obstruction of the Adshel advertising panel, footpath obstruction between the shelter and the kerb."

With the note came a digital photo of the bus stop, complete with a picture of the third attempt to site the bin, this time discreetly hidden against the fence line, on the back, far side of the shelter.

The next day I discovered the clunky old bin, which I thought had long gone, was lingering further up the fenceline, on the other side of the shelter, upside down, with rubbish emerging from the bottom.

It looked for all the world like a winning entry for et al at next year's Venice Biennale. Remember where you read it first.