Yarra Council has voted to permanently remove a vandalised Captain James Cook memorial from its collection, sparking backlash from commentators who say the decision rewards ideological destruction.

The statue, formerly located at the entrance to Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy North, was toppled and defaced on January 28, 2024. Vandals smashed the granite plinth, damaged the bronze bust and scrawled “cook the colony” across it. Since then, it has remained in storage.

On Tuesday night, councillors voted unanimously to remove the monument from council’s collection and not reinstate it. A council report cited the $15,000 repair cost — of which $5,000 would be covered by insurance — and warned the memorial would likely remain a target for future attacks.

“The Memorial's return to the site is likely to create a risk of ongoing vandalism of the object,” the report stated. “Mitigation measures such as additional lighting or surveillance could be explored, though these will have cost implications beyond the current budget and will only operate as a deterrent.”

Yarra Council Mayor Stephen Jolly said restoring the statue would only invite repeated attacks. “I’m not in favour of demolishing statues of people in the past, even problematic ones,” he said. “But [I] don’t think if we put it back up, it would be just damaged one more time. It would be ongoing, ongoing and ongoing. And how can we justify that?”

Bad call ⁦@YarraCouncil⁩

Giving into vandals will only embolden them to destroy more statues and war memorialshttps://t.co/hDHZworGlG

— Menachem Vorchheimer (@MenachemV) May 13, 2025

Institute of Public Affairs director Bella d’Abrera slammed the council’s decision as “intellectual cowardice”.

“It is a sad indictment on the state of Melbourne that even a granite monument, quietly standing in a park, is not safe from ideological vandalism,” d’Abrera said.

“Apparently, the best way to engage with history in 2025 is to vandalise monuments. We used to debate ideas, now we just destroy anything that might offend.”

She added: “Captain Cook is one of the greatest explorers who ever lived and today there is still much to learn from his great legacy.”

Talks are now underway between the council and the Captain Cook Society to find a new home for the damaged memorial. “Rather than it sitting in some council shed somewhere ... it should be preserved, and an appropriate place found for it,” the society’s Bill Lang told The Age.

Lang said he understood the repair costs might not be a priority for council but warned that vandalism should not go unpunished. “We would all do much better to understand our history and to learn from it.”

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