Ceremony is an important and public aspect of our social and political lives. This panel discussion will explore the history and contemporary significance of ceremony in three distinct arenas of Australia’s national life: citizenship, the honours system, and the swearing-in of new judges. Significant important and contemporary themes traverse and animate these ceremonies, including the relationship between Australia’s British heritage and its modern independent nationhood; tensions between diversity and national unity, and between history and modernity; and the politics of Indigenous recognition within the colonial legal system. In different ways, each paper also speaks to who ‘counts’ in public life; a theme of contemporary interest in both Australian and international contexts.