Malcolm Turnbull says indigenous broadcaster Stan Grant is "dead wrong" in calling for the inscription on a Captain Cook statue to be changed.
The inscription on the Sydney monument says the English explorer discovered the territory, but Grant believes it tells Aboriginal people before 1770 they did not exist.
Mr Turnbull said the vast majority of Australians would share his horror at the thought of "rewriting history" by editing the inscriptions on statues.
"All of those statues, all of those monuments, are part of our history and we should respect them and preserve them," Mr Turnbull told Neil Mitchell on 3AW radio on Friday.
"By all means, put up other monuments, put up other signs and sites that explain our history."
Mr Turnbull said Australians ought celebrate the country's history in all of its diversity, challenges and controversy.
"You don't rewrite history by editing stuff out; if you want to write a new chapter of our history, if you want to challenge assumptions in the past, by all means do so," he said.
"But we can't get into this Stalinist exercise of trying to white out, or obliterate, or blank out parts of our history."
