Calls to change the wording on colonial-era monuments in Australia have been slammed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as “Stalinist” exercises in rewriting history.
Mr.Turnbull was speaking in response to recent calls for monuments that commemorate and record Captain James Cook’s arrival in Australia to be amended. As Breitbart London reported, Aboriginal campaigners are demanding that reference to Captain Cook discovering Australia be removed from a 138-year-old statue of the British naval explorer that now stands in the NSW state capital of Sydney.
The push Down Under has been sparked by the high-profile removal of Confederate statues and desecration of memorials to historic figures in the United States.
“Trying to edit our history is wrong,” Turnbull told Melbourne radio station 3AW. “All of those statues, all of those monuments are part of our history and we should respect them and preserve them.”
Mr. Turnbull said attempts to change the national day and alter monuments to Australia’s past were being pushed by “fringe” leftists.
“I think the vast majority of Australians are as horrified as you and I are at the thought that we’re going to go around rewriting history, editing the inscriptions on statues, deleting Australia Day,” he said. “If you want to write a new chapter to our history, if you want to challenge assumptions in the past, by all means do so.
“But we can’t get into this, sort of Stalinist exercise of trying to white-out or obliterate or blank-out parts of our history.”
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com
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