Green MP Golriz Ghahraman says statues which memorialise colonial figures should be removed rather than edited to add context.
In an interview with Newshub Nation on Saturday, Gaharaman told host Tova O'Brien it would be a different story if the statues were different.
"If they were memorialising our colonial past, maybe it would be a different conversation," she said.
"But they're glorifying people who have done certain things which have been hurtful and we're still seeing the impacts of that."
The conversation follows protesters in the US and UK tearing down or vandalising statues of former slave traders and colonialists in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
Floyd died in May after a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes - his death caused outrage across the US, with thousands of people marching to protest the systemic racism which enables black people to be killed at the hands of police.
The protests have now spread across the world, and after protesters in the US and UK took statues down, there some who want to do the same here.
Ghahraman says the statues represent something New Zealanders don't stand for, and therefore should be removed.
"I think remove them - they're a glorification of something that we as a country don't stand for."
