A long-targeted statue of British explorer Captain James Cook will not return to a Melbourne park after the local government decided it’s no longer worth the cost of repeated repairs.

The Yarra City Council voted unanimously to permanently remove the monument, which had been snapped off its base and defaced with graffiti reading “cook the colony” shortly after Australia Day on January 26. Critics of the national holiday refer to it as “Invasion Day,” pointing to the lack of a treaty with Indigenous Australians at the time of British colonization.

Mayor Stephen Jolly said the decision to scrap the statue, which featured a bronze likeness of Cook, was driven by economics—not politics. “It’s AU$15,000 each time to fix it, and it just keeps getting vandalised. It’s a waste of ratepayers’ money,” he told the ABC.

Cook, who charted Australia's east coast in 1770, is a contentious figure. While celebrated by some as a pioneering navigator, others view his role as symbolic of colonial oppression.

Opposition leader Brad Battin criticised the council's move, claiming it gives in to activists. “If we erase history because of vandalism, we surrender to those trying to rewrite it,” he said.

Jolly disagreed, arguing that removing the monument denies vandals the ongoing satisfaction of repeated attacks. “They probably wanted us to keep putting it back so they could knock it down again.”

The statue’s base remains at Edinburgh Gardens, marked with a traffic cone featuring a hand-drawn smiley face—an apparent nod to what once stood there.

The local branch of the Captain Cook Society has offered to preserve parts of the statue, including its bronze plaques, and is in talks to relocate it to a museum or similar space. Photo by Donaldytong, Wikimedia commons.