CALE: Right now, it doesn't seem to be a good time to be a statue.
Around the world, some are being taken down...
(CHEERING) ..going swimming...
(CHEERING) ..or getting an involuntary makeover.
CROWD: (CHANTING) Take it down!
So what is it about these bronze and marble figures from the past
that's making people in the present so upset?
Well, for thousands of years, statues have been a popular way
of celebrating the things, people, or ideas
that we think are important.
WOMAN: Statue-making or memorialising tends to say
more about the people and the time and the place
when the statue was erected,
than the person in the first place.
Professor Clare Wright is a historian,
and she says statues can be a fascinating window into history.
The trouble is history can be complicated.
Take this statue from Bristol, for example.
Come on, mate, out you get.
It depicts Edward Colston,
an extremely wealthy man from the 17th century
who donated heaps of money to charity.
The trouble is most of that money was made
by selling people into slavery.
There are examples like this all around the world.
And many say they're a constant reminder
of past and present racial injustice.
We remain oppressed by the police,
and we remain oppressed by the establishment.
And such monuments remain to oppress us,
and they remain to celebrate black oppression.
Here in Australia, there have also been calls
to remove statues.
Like this one.
This guy, Charles Kingston, was the premier of South Australia,
but he's also known as the father of the White Australia policy.
That was a law brought in in 1901,
to try and keep non-white people out of the country.
And then there's John Batman, who founded Melbourne
but was also involved in the murder of Aboriginal people.
Why should Aboriginal people have to suffer the indignity
of seeing these racist murderers being honoured in a statue?
Across Australia, there are lots...
..and lots...
..and lots of statues
depicting British colonial leaders,
and not nearly as many honouring Indigenous Australians.
For example, next to many statues of explorer Matthew Flinders
sits a statue of his cat,
while Bungaree, a Kuringgai man
who helped him circumnavigate Australia, is nowhere to be seen.
The statues that we see so dotted through our landscape now
represent ideas of power, of control.
I guess all we want is to have this equal say,
to have the right to say, "Listen to our story as well."
Last week, protesters in Sydney defaced two statues
of Captain James Cook.
The vandalism made lots of people angry.
It's very un-Australian, it's disrespectful, and it's wrong.
Some say our statues represent
an important part of the country's history,
and tearing them down would be like trying to erase the past.
One solution that some have suggested is adding plaques to statues,
which explain the history - the good and the bad.
And then people can come along, and they can make up their minds.
Others say we could move them to museums,
where people can learn more about the time period they represent.
And some reckon the answer is to build more statues
that represent all Australians.
Why can't we have more statues
of people who we consider to be important to the nation
that we are now - a tolerant nation,
an inclusive nation, a multicultural nation?
But whether you see them as monuments to history,
or relics best forgotten,
some say we need to have a discussion about our statues
and what they say about who we were then and who we are now.