RFK Jr’s rise to Secretary of Health in the Trump Administration stands as a triumph many thought impossible.

Not only did one of the most famous Democrat names join the MAGA Republicans, but Kennedy’s criticism and scepticism surrounding the safety of some vaccines made him a target for media outrage.

Most people’s careers do not survive that sort of attention.

Kennedy said of Trump:

‘A lot of things have surprised me about the President because I bought into this fact that he was this one-dimensional character, that he was kind of a bombastic narcissist, and all this. Part of it is hearing it all the time on TV […] but what I’ve been surprised, in getting to know him, is what a deep, multi-dimensional, and thoughtful character he is […] he’s immensely curious, inquisitive, but also the most surprising thing is […] he is one of the most empathetic people.’

This empathy from the President, and Trump’s commitment to honouring promises made to those who supported his campaign, has seen the empowerment of Kennedy. This has allowed him to progress his American health agenda into areas his predecessors were too frightened to touch.

Kennedy’s determination to reform policy poses a threat to the formerly untouchable institutions of Big Pharma and Big Agriculture. He has bold plans to increase safety checks for vaccines and go to war with harmful chemicals added to American food. It is interesting to note that compliance regarding the phasing out of food dyes was met with very little resistance, almost as if the risks to public health have been known for a while…

The good news about Kennedy is that he is genuinely passionate about the health of the American people, not the profit margins of companies.

Since taking on the role, Secretary Kennedy has done exactly as he promised in the promotion of public health while failing to live up to the scary anti-science monster envisioned by the Left.

No, he is not the tinfoil hat-wearing spectre of the media.

Nor does he have any interest in banning health measures without first conducting research.

Instead, he is seeking to restore trust, safety, and public interest.

While the safety, generally, of vaccines remains under review, the safety, specifically, of Covid vaccines continues to unravel.

Considering upwards of $280 billion changed hands between public treasuries and private pharmaceutical companies, often under the threat of mandates and coercive measures for vaccine compliance, plenty of residual anger lurks in the community along with a desire to know if there are lingering threats to public health. This is particularly true of mRNA vaccines which were effectively trialled on an unsuspecting public.

Secretary Kennedy said last week of one particular group and its alleged behaviour:

‘In its zeal to promote universal vaccination, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety.’

He goes on to make the accusation that during the Covid pandemic ‘GAVI partnered with the World Health Organisation to recommend best practices for social media companies to silence dissenting views and to stifle free speech and legitimate questions during that period’ and then remarks that ‘GAVI should consider the best science available, even when that science contradicts established paradigms’.

That sounds like something that could be said of our (then) Liberal federal government, which was found to have sent takedown notices to Facebook and Twitter during the Covid era to remove what it considered ‘misinformation’, including the personal experiences of vaccine-injured Australians.

As a side note, on June 27, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, along with the Minister for International Development, released a statement, Strengthening access to lifesaving vaccines, in which taxpayers will be coughing up $386 million to GAVI between 2026-30.

‘This includes a new funding commitment of $300 million.’

According to the press release:

Australia’s support for GAVI directly benefits Australia’s closest neighbours […] in addition to the new funding, GAVI will also be able to utilise $86 million previously pledged by Australia for Covid vaccines, through the International Finance Facility for Immunisation.

Alleged misinformation and disinformation on social media remains in policy-print as the justification for censorial legislation now rebranded as ‘protecting children’.

At no point have Australian politicians returned to their legislation, revised their incorrect statements about Covid and vaccines, or apologised for falsely using this as the basis for censorship policy.

I spoke to Libertarian NSW MLC John Ruddick about whether or not there should be some automatic process to repeal laws based on false or inaccurate information. That conversation was in relation to the ‘Caravan Hoax’ and subsequent hate speech legislation. Still, it shows that knee-jerk laws are being created, on more than one occasion, with what we might consider ‘dodgy’ logic and then left in place as a building block for other legislation.

If Sussan Ley and the Coalition are looking for ways to build trust and restore faith among voters who walked away during the Morrison era, they might want to think about issuing a few apologies and pressuring the Albanese government to drag out this Covid-era legislation and correct the record. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a review into the overreaction of government and a lesson learned about the interference of government in public spaces and discussions?

Oh well…

Instead, we were treated to the Opposition Leader proudly calling for more government interference in social media censorship and championing the idea of government being in the corner of parents.

That is not to say that Secretary Kennedy is perfect.

He seems keen to see Americans embrace ‘wearables’, that is, technology that tracks health in real-time. Some of these are already popular in the free market, such as watches that track sleep, steps, and heart rate.

‘We think that wearables are key to the MAHA agenda: Make America Healthy Again. My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years.’

It is understandable why he is interested in the wider adoption of this technology. American health is in a dreadful state and, as he says, ‘It’s a way … people can take control of their own health. They can take responsibility. They can see, as you know, what food is doing to their glucose levels, their heart rates, and a number of other metrics as they heat, and they can begin to make good judgments about their diet, about their physical activity, about the way that they live their lives.’

Others remain concerned.

All data is valuable, and health data is particularly lucrative.

There is already a concern that voluntarily collected health data could be used to deny health insurance or raise premiums. This is particularly true in a post-Covid world where we saw medical privacy shredded before our eyes in the interest of ‘public health’.

Data privacy is seen by our governments and their corporate partners as a nuisance rather than a necessity of trust.

Even if we rule out data breaches and privacy violations, who is to say that a failure to engage in wearables might result in financial punishments (just as a refusal to engage in vaccines can exclude families from certain benefits)?

For all the good work that Secretary Kennedy does, I would prefer that all governments remain passive in their approach to health.

Regulating Big Pharma and increasing safety standards is a far more welcome approach.

It is a good sign that the usual suspects in the media are panicking beneath hysterical headlines about Kennedy’s vaccine safety crackdown.

ABC News (America): Experts warn RFK Jr. is unravelling the system that kept vaccines safe, it complains.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee is set to meet this week for the first time since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all of its sitting members and appointed new ones.

The Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices is expected to vote on vaccine recommendations for the fall as well as discuss other vaccines, including those given to children. The group wields enormous influence setting vaccine policy.

As the Department of Health and Human Services described the situation: ‘Secretary Kennedy is restoring public trust by reconstituting ACIP with highly credentialled doctors, scientists, and public health experts committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense.’

Restoring Gold Standard Science was an Executive Order from the White House signed on May 23, 2025.

It states: ‘Over the last 5 years, confidence that scientists act in the best interests of the public has fallen significantly. A majority of researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics believe science is facing a reproducibility crisis.’

The Conversation described the above sequence of events as:

The undermining of regulation, advisory processes, and funding changes will have global impacts, as debunked claims are given new levels of apparent legitimacy. Some of the impacts will be slow and insidious … Australia is fortunate to be buffered from these impacts. Our vaccine advisory body, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, has people with deep expertise in vaccination.

Unlike The Conversation, many Australians would prefer this shake-up of Big Pharma to spread across the ocean and give the TGA a good few aftershocks and tremors.

This country, currently, has no stomach for bold review of bad ideas. The institutions that are meant to safeguard our health do not seem particularly interested in new layers of public scrutiny into all the mistakes they made during Covid. Politicians, in particular, have fought hard to keep the secrets of Covid locked down to the point we are meant to believe that they ‘value transparency’, ‘trust the science’, but don’t want to share the revelations of National Cabinet that led to lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Secretary Kennedy may be an ocean away, but his review into pharmaceutical companies and vaccine safety standards may be the only insight available to Australians for a very long time.