Celebrating Victoria’s Workplace Rehabilitation Professionals

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more generous group of people than those who dedicate their working lives to helping others recover from injury. Put hundreds of them together in one room and you’re also guaranteed a wonderfully fun night!

I was delighted to return as MC for the 2026 Victoria Excellence in Workplace Rehabilitation Awards, held in the magnificent Plaza Ballroom at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre.

The awards recognise the exceptional people working across Victoria’s workplace health, rehabilitation and return-to-work sector. This year’s event attracted an impressive 142 award submissions, together with 37 Length of Service recognitions—a wonderful reflection of the commitment and experience found throughout the industry.

In addition to hosting the formal proceedings and presenting the awards, I created two bespoke audience interaction moments for the evening. With a prize at stake, the competition became surprisingly—and very entertainingly—fierce!

Congratulations to all the finalists, winners and service recognition recipients.

A special thank you to the always-smiling event manager, Malinda Moreton, for the enormous amount of work she put into such an impressive evening—and for one particularly ingenious piece of backstage problem-solving.

I needed somewhere discreet to discard the winners’ envelopes after each announcement. Malinda quickly grabbed her son Archie’s insulated lunch bag and attached its Velcro tab to the back of the lectern, completely hidden from the audience. Bingo—the perfect solution!

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Perhaps I should add one to my professional MC kit alongside the coloured highlighters, battery-powered clip-on light and ATEM vision switcher.

Here's some more pics from the night!

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It was also a pleasure to once again work with my good friend and brilliant professional photographer, Melissa Hobbs, who captured the evening beautifully.

Finally, my sincere thanks to ARPA National and Brad Hopes from ICMI Speakers and Entertainers for inviting me back to host this important celebration of an extraordinary industry.