Indigenous broadcaster Stan Grant said his country should follow the example set by the United States and think about getting rid of icons which leave a “legacy of pain”.
He said the statue of James Cook which stands in Sydney’s Hyde Park makes indigenous people feel “invisible”.
And he attacked an inscription on the monument to the captain, who sailed the first fleet of British ships to Australia in 1770, which read: “DISCOVERED THIS TERRITORY 1770.”
Writing for the ABC, Mr Grant told how the claims on the statue were a sore point for Indigenous people – calling it a reminder of “the violent rupture of Aboriginal society”.
He wrote: “This statue speaks to emptiness, it speaks to our invisibility.
“It says that nothing truly mattered, nothing truly counted until a white sailor first walked on these shores.”
The comments follow violent protests in the US over a statue of Confederate leader Robert E Lee which some argued celebrates America’s slave-owning past.
And following riots which killed one woman, calls to tear down the Charlottesville statue have only grown louder – and even spread around the globe.
London’s monument to Lord Nelson which towers over Trafalgar Square is just the latest to face calls for the chop.
In an opinion piece on the Guardian website, columnist Afua Hirsch argued “figures like Nelson immediately sing to mind” when hearing the latest about the 700-odd confederate statues which have been pulled down in the US.
She wrote that while the reaction in Britain to the Charlottesville incident is “almost entirely condemnatory of neo-Nazis in the US”, the “colonial and pro-slavery titans of British history are still memorialised” in the UK.
The article has been condemned by many, including former Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe who said the idea was “total rubbish”.
And Jerry White, a history professor at London’s Birkbeck College, called Ms Hirsch’s suggestion “cultural vandalism”.
However in Australia, Mr Grant accepts the controversial Captain Cook statue should remain despite his outburst.
He said: “Captain Cook’s statue stands in the centre of our biggest city. There are Indigenous people who for good reason would prefer to see it removed.
“Personally I accept that it remains; Cook is part of the story of this nation.”