Two women have been charged after a Captain Cook statue in Sydney's Hyde Park was allegedly defaced.
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Police were alerted to graffiti on the statue about 4am on Sunday and arrested two women - aged 27 and 28 - nearby on College Street in the CBD, NSW Police said in a statement.
The women were allegedly found with several spray cans in a bag.
They were charged with destroying or damaging property and possessing a graffiti implement and were refused bail to appear at Parramatta Bail Court later on Sunday.
Historical monuments across the world have been toppled over the past two weeks as Black Lives Matter protesters marched through the streets to call out racism following the death of African American man George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.
In Australia, people have defied public health warnings amid the COVID-19 pandemic and turned out to protest indigenous deaths in custody and to rally in support of the BLM movement in Sydney, Perth, Darwin, Adelaide and Melbourne.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian noted the majority of people would be "very upset" over the alleged incident.
"There is a very, very small number of people in the community that are seeking to do this and I ask them not to," she told reporters in Sydney on Sunday.
"I ask everybody to please respect what's in place, I ask everybody to be respectful of the difficult situation all of us find ourselves in NSW."
It comes as Victorian police are also investigating the defacing of statues in Ballarat.
The statues of former Australian prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard were sprayed with red paint on Saturday morning.
They have since been covered and fenced off and a conservator will assess the damage on Monday.
A Captain James Stirling statue in Perth, Western Australia was on Friday also defaced and a 30-year-old man has been charged with criminal damage or destruction of property.
The statue's neck and hands were painted red and an Aboriginal flag was painted over the inscription at the base.
Australian Associated Press
