source : the age
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed this morning that an AI agent breached the government’s Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal.
Here’s what we know so far:
- An OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to the public-facing portal, which is administered by Services Australia. No personal data was breached, and the government has assured Australians the information accessed by the agent was completely separate from any personal Medicare data.
- The breach occurred on June 18, and OpenAI became aware of it in August. Government ministers were not informed about the incident until the end of last week.
- The government was only informed after OpenAI emailed a public Services Australia address on September 10.
- Albanese said he had spoken to Altman about the incident. “I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable,” he told a New York press conference.
- The government has mobilised a taskforce to investigate the hack, and Marles said OpenAI was working “cooperatively” with it to determine how it occurred.
- Minister for Government Services Katy Gallagher was informed about the breach on September 17, six days after Services Australia discovered the alert in the public email inbox and two days after the Australian Signals Directorate was informed.
- The OpenAI software also accessed NSW’s Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research: Premier Chris Minns said Albanese personally called him last night to report the breach.
One of Sydney’s most prized public parks with uninterrupted views of the Opera House, Circular Quay and the harbour is set to be transformed from churned soil to open green space after a sustained campaign from locals who called for the derelict space to be returned to the community.
The NSW government today revealed plans to expand open space at Bradfield Park South, a foreshore stretch in Kirribilli near the northern pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
For years, the park has been used as a construction site for essential maintenance involving the repainting and removal of rust on the 94-year-old Harbour Bridge.
Locals said what should be world-class, picturesque views are far from reality: churned soil, fencing and constant construction activity still remain today.
A professor of law and AI ethics says today’s news of an OpenAI agent breaching Medicare is unlikely to have breached Australian criminal or civil law, but was close to doing both.
Earlier today, acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said he had yet to determine whether OpenAI had broken the law or was liable to suffer a penalty.
Melbourne University’s Jeannie Paterson told ABC News: “There are Commonwealth laws that prohibit accessing modifying or impairing a database where access isn’t authorised, but that requires intention.
“What we’re hearing from OpenAI is that they didn’t know or didn’t intend for it to happen. Without investigation, without access to internal company documents, it would be difficult to show this was an intentional breach or that there was knowledge of what was happening.”
A US federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump to restore White House access for journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico, saying his ban on the three media outlets was most likely unconstitutional.
In a major setback for Trump in one of his biggest battles with the media, US District Judge Tim Kelly issued his order in a lawsuit that the news organisations filed contesting the ban that the Republican president announced on September 18.
Trump had said on social media that the three outlets “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES”, and Justice Department lawyers had sought to justify the ban on national security grounds.
In response to the ban, other networks suspended their pool coverage of Trump’s press conferences, leading to one event at which Trump gave an inaudible speech.
The Minns government will recruit an additional 950 nurses to work across 70 NSW hospitals to ease treatment waiting times and improve care.
Under Labor’s Safe Staffing Levels reforms, a minimum of one nurse to four patients will apply during morning and afternoon shifts across more than 360 general and specialty wards.
The latest NSW hospital data shows one in 10 patients spends 25½ hours in an emergency department waiting for a bed in a ward, while almost 9 per cent give up and leave without completing treatment.
Safe Staffing Levels are already being rolled out at 81 emergency departments across NSW, with 990 nurses already recruited, Health Minister Ryan Park’s office reported today.
Just hours before the government confirmed an OpenAI software agent breached the Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal, Australia’s securities regulator revealed it is strengthening safeguards for automated and artificial intelligence-enabled trading.
The reforms will require market participants to test, monitor and govern trading systems and algorithms as markets evolve and AI adoption increases, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said in a statement.
The amendments follow extensive industry consultation and the changes will take effect in 2028.
The safeguards are part of a wave of regulatory changes globally as authorities seek to keep pace with the growing use of AI and automation in financial markets. The changes may shape how firms deploy the technology and how regulators oversee its use in the years ahead.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie says OpenAI’s breach of Medicare, revealed today by the prime minister, came after many people including himself had been warning the government of AI’s dangers.
“It’s been disappointing the government has been moving so slow on this. Hopefully, today won’t be so much of a wake-up call but a call to arms,” he told ABC News.
While he welcomed the announcement of a rapid review and a taskforce to look into the breach, he said, “Quite frankly, everything up until now has moved too slowly.
“We still don’t have a national AI safety act, even though it has been discussed for a long time. Even with this particular episode everything moved slowly.
Ukraine has sent two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN General Assembly, following months of consultations between Kyiv and Seoul after the soldiers were captured in Russia’s Kursk region in 2025.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry did not directly confirm Zelensky’s comments but said it had been consulting with Kyiv and other relevant parties to resolve the matter in a manner that respected the soldiers’ free will and complied with international law and humanitarian principles.
The ministry said in a statement that it would not confirm details about the soldiers’ “disposition, the timing or route of their transfer or specific contents of consultations” with Ukraine, calling it a sensitive matter concerning the safety of the soldiers and their families.
The soldiers were among thousands of North Korean troops sent to support Russia’s war on Ukraine.
AP
The federal government has been fined after a primary schoolchild endured second-degree burns at the nation’s largest science education centre.
The nine-year-old girl suffered burns to her hands and arms in July 2022 when she used alcohol-based hand sanitiser and touched a plasma globe exhibit at Questacon, a government-run centre in Canberra known to attract school excursions and young families.
Her hands, fingers and wrists were covered by the burns, and her forearm had blisters.
The government was fined $140,000 today as a result.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump will sit down this week to hash out a plethora of thorny issues from trade to Taiwan.
But one thing both sides agree on: neither can afford to tap the brakes on AI.
While Silicon Valley debates the possibility of artificial intelligence wiping out humanity, Washington and Beijing appear more worried about global technological supremacy.
The two countries have signalled no intention to slow down AI development – a debate that has flared anew in Australia after today’s news of an OpenAI model breaking into Medicare.
The federal government has released the terms of reference for its rapid review into the OpenAI breach of Medicare announced this morning.
The review will be led by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet alongside the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian AI Safety Institute.
It will cover the incident, cyber vulnerabilities in the system, reporting obligations and Commonwealth governance for future incidents.
