Celebrant (Australia) celebrancy was established by the Australian Commonwealth Attorney General Lionel Murphy on 19 July 1973, when his first appointee, Mrs Lois D'Arcy, was categorised as a Civil Marriage Celebrant. Later, as civil marriage celebrants branched out into the performance of other ceremonies such as Funerals and Namings the term was shortened to Civil Celebrant. According to civil celebrant Dally Messenger III: The civil celebrant program is almost entirely the result of one man's vision. Murphy himself told me the story of how he was opposed by his own staff, the public service, his fellow members of parliament and officials of
Celebrant (Australia) registry office officials and those conducted by independent marriage celebrants. Similarly, statistics of religious marriages only give separate figures for the two largest denominations, Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Until 1994, Celebrant Training was mainly achieved by informal but effective mentoring of new celebrants by the more experienced. This was augmented by seminars and conferences organised by the main celebrant organisations. Significant progress in understanding of the celebrant role was achieved at the annual "Pallotti" live-in conferences which took place at Warburton in Victoria from 1994 to 1999. International lecturers included Mary Hancock from New Zealand and David Oldfield from Washington