Pocock calls for AI safety act after Medicare breach – as it happened

That’s a wrap on our live coverage for today! Before we go, let’s recap the day’s top headlines: Anthony Albanese has called the first reported artificial intelligence agent hack into an Australian government website a “wake-up call” of the dangers of the technology. James Paterson has questioned the timing of the prime minister’s announcement about the hack, saying he believed Albanese had chosen to make the announcement at the UN summit in New York, as part of his effort to stand up to “big tech” on AI. The PM has denied the suggestion and called it “nonsense”. Staying on the PM’s US trip, Albanese detailed Australia’s bid for a temporary seat on the UN security council for 2029 to 2030. Australia’s gen Z are the generation most willing to cut their spending way back to afford a home, according to new Cotality data. An investigation is under way after a police officer was killed in a crash in Sydney’s inner west. The commissioner has paid tribute to the young female cop. Renters in New South Wales will only need to provide their driver’s licences and passports if they are about to sign a lease, instead of including them in every rental application, under new laws. Thanks for joining us, and have a lovely weekend! The independent senator David Pocock says the recent AI agent breach raises serious questions about Australia’s approach to artificial intelligence regulation. Speaking on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Pocock said the incident demonstrated the need for the government to introduce an AI safety act. This is not a new problem. For many years now experts have been saying we need action on this. The crossbench has been pushing them. The government then said, ‘we’ll have some guardrails, we’ll put them on a website’ … that’s not enough. Clearly it’s not. This is a huge challenge facing us. Qld parliamentary review of liability bill chooses not to hear from sexual abuse victims A Queensland parliamentary committee reviewing a bill to overturn a ban on lawsuits by child sexual abuse victims against some employers has chosen not to hear from any victim-survivors. The state Labor MP Meaghan Scanlon tabled the bill last year. It reverses a 2024 high court judgment ruling that the Catholic church was not legally responsible for the actions of a priest, because they were not a direct employee. The judgment also applies to all other employers. Similar legislation has already passed parliaments in Victoria and the ACT. The Queensland parliament’s justice, integrity and community safety committee held a single two-hour hearing into the bill this morning. The committee, which has a government chair, chose only to hear from lawyers. Child abuse survivor Diane Carpenter said she was “devastated” not to be allowed to be heard by the inquiry and called for the bill to be passed. If the bill is not passed, many adults who, as children, were abused in institutional care, will have no pathway to justice. Currently, we have two classes of victims: those who can access justice and those who can’t. A new trial date has been set for a British musician and media personality accused of violently raping a fan in a hotel, after a jury was unable to reach a verdict, AAP reports. Rapper Yung Filly, who is legally known as Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, faced trial in July over his 2024 encounter with a 20-year-old woman after a Perth nightclub gig. The 31-year-old was found guilty of two assault offences and acquitted of three sexual penetration charges following an eight-day trial in Western Australia’s district court in July. The jury was hung on three other sexual penetration counts and Barrientos is set to be retried for the charges. He was not required to appear when the case returned to court on Friday and a fresh trial was listed for 2027. The trial, beginning on 15 June in the same court, is expected to run for eight days. Judge Linda Black previously permitted Barrientos to vary his bail so he could travel home to the UK while he awaits retrial. He is understood to have departed Perth in late August. Should dogs be allowed in pubs? We asked Melbourne pet owners With their poll numbers in the dog house, the Victorian Labor government is hoping something as universally loved as pooches will help them. Labor is promising to change the rules to allow people to bring their pups into pubs. Our Victorian state correspondent, Benita Kolovos, hit the streets to find out what people thought of the idea. Good afternoon! Thanks for sticking around, I’ll be here to guide you through the rest of the day’s news. That’s all for me. Achol Arok will take things from here. Take care! Who is James Ashby? Pauline Hanson’s ‘favourite son’ One Nation’s national director James Ashby wields as much – if not more – power over the party as Pauline Hanson herself. Rafqa Touma speaks to Guardian Australia senior correspondent Sarah Martin about Ashby’s rise from PR flack to Hanson’s “favourite son” as One Nation’s popularity soars. Australian shares on track for fourth straight losing week The Australian share market has fallen to a three-month low and is headed for its fourth straight week of losses, as oil prices and bond yields both moved higher, AAP reports. Near noon on Friday, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index had fallen 0.43% to 8,664, its lowest level since mid-June, while the broader All Ordinaries had dropped 0.55%, to 8,848.2. With a few hours of trading left, the ASX200 was on pace to finish the week down 0.8%, and was also 0.6% lower since the start of the year. The Australian dollar was changing hands for 70.12 US cents, from 70.35 US cents at 5pm on Thursday. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, says it’s “nonsense” to suggest the government may have released details about the OpenAI breach when it did because it suited him politically. He told Sky News earlier: It’s just nonsense. We were informed of this late. That’s one of the issues that I raised with Sam Altman when I spoke with him yesterday. I was informed while I’ve been in New York. When pressed if the details were released as soon as possible, the prime minister said: “Absolutely”. This was a unique situation. … We had to ascertain the facts, and then we made the statements, as a matter of urgency. Albanese said he briefed the opposition as appropriate, and said Angus Taylor’s criticism was uncalled for. He needs to act more like a responsible leader of an alternative government if he’s going to be taken seriously. This is a unique situation without precedence. Police have released a photo of Mia Lay, the officer who died in this morning’s crash Read more: More Queensland social housing dwellings vacant for longer More social housing dwellings in Queensland are sitting vacant for longer, according to new data released by the state government. The average downtime for a social housing dwelling has increased from 25.1 days last June to 42.7 days in July. Vacancy rates are slightly up from about 0.56% to 0.6%. The data was released yesterday in response to a parliamentary question. The number of people in the state’s emergency homelessness assistance scheme – which pays hotels and motels to accommodate them – has declined from 3,623 to 2,707. The state made many homeless people ineligible for the system last year. There has been a slight increase in the number of Queenslanders in the state’s public housing system, from 55,913 to 55,998, but a decline in the number on the social housing waiting list, from 53,874 last September to 46,037 in July. One Nation admits using party funds to build $56,000 shed on James Ashby’s private property One Nation has admitted using party funds to build a $56,000 shed on James Ashby’s private property. Guardian Australia revealed on Monday that a company linked to One Nation – Small Batch Brewing Pty Ltd – was the purchaser of the shed on Ashby’s property despite having no revenue stream and not being licensed to make or sell alcohol. Ashby is living in the shed on his Yeppoon property while he undertakes renovations. In an email sent to members on Thursday night, the party’s general manager, Kelvin Morton, said party funds had been used to build the shed. Read more here: Police say Lay died responding to reports of a stolen vehicle Continuing the police press conference, Commissioner Lanyon said Lay was responding to reports of a stolen vehicle when the crash occurred. The exact circumstances of the collision remain unknown and remain under investigation. Lanyon said: We have formed a critical investigation. The experts in examining road crashes, our crash investigation unit, are at the scene at the moment. We’re trying to examine every circumstance. Our officers were responding to an urgent duty, which is where they have lights and sirens on. Police said the investigation would examine factors including the vehicle’s speed and road conditions, with the aim of improving officer safety. When officers are actually travelling on urgent duty, when they have lights and sirens on they’re exempt under the Australian road rules. So they can exceed the speed limit. But we need to understand the circumstances. As the commissioner, what I’m keen to do to make sure our officers are as safe as possible and the best and the only to do that is to examine these scenes thoroughly so we understand what happened. Police commissioner pays tribute to officer killed in Redfern crash Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon has paid tribute to constable Mia Lay, who died after a police car crashed into a tree in Sydney’s inner south. The police car was travelling along Gibbons Street in Redfern with its lights and sirens activated when it crashed at about 1.30am on Friday. Police said Lay died “instantly”. Lay had served with the force for 16 months, based in the South Sydney Police Area Command. She showed exceptional promise and was well loved. She would have been an outstanding police officer. And to lose her life both in its prime and just at the infancy of becoming a police officer is a terrible tragedy. Today is a terribly difficult day. We are here, we will support each other as police officers. We understand the risk of what we do. We put our lives in the way for the safety of the community, to prevent crime and to make sure the community is safe. Terribly on of those days, some police officers pay the ultimate sacrifice. To Mia, thank you for your courage. Angus Taylor had some harsh words for the prime minister this morning, saying Anthony Albanese is “swanning around New York” at the UN general assembly rather than tackling fuel prices at home. Taylor had this to say this morning: Australians are suffering. And that’s why our fuel price shield will bring down the price of fuel when the price is high … What we see is a prime minister swanning around New York, getting his global citizen of the year award, hanging out with the United Nations, instead of looking at and seeing the pain that Australians are feeling at the bowser and struggling to make ends meet. Get real, mate. Get back here and cut the price of fuel. Albanese issued robust calls for an end to the Iranian war during his address to the UN general assembly today. Taylor and the Coalition have proposed a cut to the fuel excise tax whenever oil prices are sustained at more than US$100 a barrel. Renters in New South Wales will only need to provide their driver’s licences and passports if they are about to sign a lease, instead of including them in every rental application, under new laws. Agents and landlords will also be required to use one standardised rental application form, which will not request details such as photos, social media accounts, details about children – or tattoos. The new rules also require landlords and agents to say if photographs of the property have been digitally altered or AI-generated to hide faults – including “fake furniture that hides structural damage or misrepresents room proportions”. In addition, it will become mandatory for agents to tell renters if a property is locked in to an embedded utility network – like a private electricity or gas system – which stops them from shopping around for the best price. Potential breaches will be up to $11,000 for individuals and $49,500 for corporations for privacy violations, and up to $22,000 for failure to disclose digitally altered photographs. Anoulack Chanthivong, the minster for better regulation and fair trading, said: This is a strong step forward to protect renters from false information in the rental market and is an important part of the Minns Labor government’s commitment to supporting the ethical use of AI across the state. These laws put an end to the practice of excessive and intrusive data collection in the rental process and make it fairer for renters and less stressful for landlords and agents. Whether you have a tattoo, or what school your kids go to, is not relevant to whether you’ll be a good tenant. Australia has a new chicken factory, but will it improve animal welfare? The sleek, rust-coloured saucer settles into the earth, mirroring the surrounding hills. It looks like an art gallery or a high-end conference centre – an architectural masterpiece designed to sit lightly on the land. Until you see the shed behind it. The sweeping lines are the gateway to a $600m poultry processing plant that will, at full capacity, process 3 million chickens a week. Jed Goodfellow, the director of policy and government relations at the Australian Alliance for Animals, said while the Baiada building may be state of the art, he believes “the welfare model behind it is anything but”. Read more here: Anthony Albanese posts a selfie with the Greek prime minister at the UN summit Albanese is back on the selfie game: he’s just posted a photo alongside the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The post comes after another, much-talked about selfie with the US president, Donald Trump. You can read about that one here: ‘We can’t ignore AI or prevent it’, Albanese tells UN Albanese again addressed the AI hack of Medicare during his address, saying the episode reflected the need for greater regulation of artificial intelligence. He said: AI can improve lives, boost growth and productivity, provide revolutionary breakthroughs in healthcare and other fields – but leaders of AI companies themselves have warned of the potential risks to allow frontier AI to develop too fast without guardrails. Recently, an artificial intelligence agent infiltrated an Australian government website. This is unacceptable. And it is why Australia has been leading the way in establishing Australian standards for AI. Standards to ensure that AI will work and deliver for people, not for other way around. We can’t ignore AI or prevent it. And it’s why we joined with other nations this week to call for action to shape artificial intelligence development, rather than be passively shaped by it. Albanese is detailing Australia’s bid for a temporary seat on the UN security council for 2029 to 2030. He said: We understand that the UN mission cannot be entrusted solely to the great powers or the biggest countries or even the loudest voices alone. Nor can it be subcontracted to the world’s richest companies or dictated by the pace of technology. The world faces tough times and Australia wants to respond, to partner, and to make a difference. Should our security council bid prove successful, our purpose and approach will be consistent with how we have always conducted ourselves at the UN. We will listen with respect, we will partner as equals, and we will protect what matters most. Albanese addresses UN general assembly The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is addressing the UN general assembly in New York City. We’ll bring you some key moments from his address in a moment. Watt says government will do what it needs to after AI breach Murray Watt, the environment minister, also spoke about the AI hack this morning. He told Sunrise the timeline behind OpenAI’s notification was “completely unacceptable”, and that the sending of an “email to a generic inbox that isn’t monitored all the time” wouldn’t stand going forward. He added: We have commissioned a task force to do an investigation of this event, and if it is possible to press criminal charges, that will happen. But what it also highlights is that we do need to ensure that Australian laws are keeping pace with this new and emerging technology. But if we need to update our laws to improve the requirements for notification of these kind of events, then that’s what we’ll do. And of course, if there’s further safeguards that need to be put in place, that’s what we’ll do as well. AI hack of Medicare exposes Australia’s vulnerabilities Technology experts have warned revelations an artificial intelligence agent hacked Medicare’s internal systems will not be the only dangerous breach of government data and have called for Australia to boost its protections against the growing risk. The Australian Council on AI Strategy chief executive, Anna-Maria Arabia, said the case was unlikely to be an isolated incident. “All of the evidence shows that our operating systems are vulnerable,” she told Guardian Australia. Frontier AI now has capability to expose those vulnerabilities at a rate quicker than we can keep up, quicker than we can patch them. Read more here: Jane Hume, the deputy leader of the opposition, was on Sunrise this morning talking about the AI breach. She questioned security on government websites and wondered what would have happened if the breach were more serious: What if it was a less benign breach? What if it was a less benign actor? Let’s face it, clearly, Services Australia’s cybersecurity is woefully inadequate. I mean the irony here is that you actually need AI to fight AI. This should hasten, if anything, our move over in the US to less finger wagging and Trump one-upmanship, and more about embracing these AI companies and bringing them here so that we can have frontier models providing sovereign capability to Australia. Because AI is going to happen. Hume said the incident should be a “warning bell” to make sure we “get on with the job of making sure that we have that capability here”. The first reported artificial intelligence agent hack into an Australian government website is a “wake-up call” of the dangers of the technology, Anthony Albanese says. AAP reports the prime minister spoke to a predecessor, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who now heads up the Asia Society, in New York. Albanese said the hack was cause for concern about whether “humans remain in charge”. This was an AI agent acting independently of its instructions, that is learning by itself. So it’s a bit of a wake-up call … about the risks. This technology is moving very very fast, and we need to make sure that we have a responsibility to keep on top of it. Charlton says AI incidents likely to become ‘more and more prevalent’ Andrew Charlton, the assistant minister for science, technology and the digital economy, said yesterday’s reported hack of Medicare by an OpenAI agent was a “novel” moment for cybersecurity, but was likely to become “more and more prevalent in the future”. Charlton spoke to RN Breakfast this morning, saying the government wanted to tell the Australian public “as quickly as possible” about the breach. When pressed why it took Services Australia five days to notify the Australian Signals Directorate about the episode, Charlton said the true blame laid on OpenAI’s slow and “completely inadequate” response: In this type of situation, you know, you would expect for an incident which is as serious as this, you would expect that disclosure to be delivered in a very serious way. It was not delivered in a very serious way, it was delivered via an email to a public inbox. He said the government is still looking at any legal action and there were questions about liability as an AI agent was “not a legal person”. Falling meth prices help drive deaths to record levels Falling methamphetamine prices have helped push overdose deaths to record levels, new data shows. AAP reports increased global supply and strong local demand are among the factors driving a surge in use of the illicit drug, according to the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. “Use and harms remain substantial and appear to have continued the upward trajectory that we saw before the Covid-19 pandemic,” University of NSW Sydney medical researcher Amy Peacock told AAP. In fact, several of the indicators are now at the highest observed levels that we’ve seen, including wastewater, consumption, methamphetamine-related hospitalisations, and death. There were more than 750 overdose deaths involving amphetamine-type stimulants – primarily methamphetamine – in 2024. That’s a rate of 2.9 deaths per 100,000 people, substantially higher than in 2021 to 2023, when it was closer to two deaths. Evidence suggests Australia continues to have one of the highest recorded rates of methamphetamine use in the world. Good morning, and happy Friday. Nick Visser here to take over the blog. Let’s get to that weekend, shall we? A crime scene has been established after a police officer was killed in a crash in Sydney’s inner west. At 1.30am, a police car was travelling on Gibbons Street in Redfern with lights and sirens on when it crashed into a tree. Police say the passenger – a female constable – died “instantly”, while the driver – a male constable – was taken to the Royal Prince Alfred hospital in a stable condition. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, said the entire NSW policing community would be grieving the “devastating” news. I’m also thinking of the officer injured in the crash and everyone who responded to this terrible scene. NSW’s opposition leader Kellie Sloane said she was “heartbroken”, saying the woman was “out working while most of us were asleep, protecting the community”. Our police put themselves in harm’s way every day to protect us. Today, we stand with them as they mourn one of their own. Anyone with information about the incident – including dashcam footage – is urged to contact Crime Stoppers. Australia’s gen Z are the generation most willing to cut their spending way back to afford a home, according to Cotality data reported by AAP. The figures show more than 75% of all Australians were curbing their outgoings in pursuit of property, meaning we are more likely to do so than our Canadian, US and UK peers (for whom the figures sat below 70%). Levels of discretionary spending, like eating out, owning a car, and even moving from the family home into a share house, have dropped among young adults in recent years. But it wasn’t just first-time buyers making significant financial sacrifices to climb the ladder. Millennials – the largest buyer cohort in the world – are readily forgoing small luxuries to afford homes large enough for their families. Prospective buyers were selling their second car or putting off holidays while their children were young, Capital Buyers Agency owner Claire Corby said. For many, it’s around delaying things like going away, or reducing things like dinners out. People are leaving where they want to live and buying in cheaper markets. Most Australians would not be persuaded to participate in the housing market until mortgage interest rates hit a 4.9% average, the data revealed. The average rate for an owner-occupier in August 2026 was 6.3%, meaning the market is likely to stay quiet for some time and allowing bold buyers to swoop in. People are being conservative and cautious. The opposition’s defence spokesperson, James Paterson, has questioned the timing of the prime minister’s announcement that an AI agent hacked Medicare. Paterson made the claim on the ABC’s 7.30 program last night after Anthony Albanese publicly disclosed that an AI agent developed by OpenAI hacked Medicare in June and that the tech giant only notified the government earlier this month using an email sent to a “public mailbox”. Paterson told 7.30 he believed Albanese had chosen to make the announcement at the UN summit in New York, as part of his effort to stand up to “big tech” on AI. The senator said: The government has questions to answer about when they knew and … why the prime minister decided to disclose it in the way he did in the place he did at the time he did. But in terms of the nature of the potential of actual security breach this is the bottom end of the spectrum of seriousness. I don’t think it was a coincidence. I think it neatly dove-tailed with the political agenda the prime minister has in New York City. Paterson said he didn’t consider the breach to be overly serious because the data the AI agent accessed was made freely available to researchers and academics studying the health system, and was not personal or private in nature. He said the breach was cause for “being alert but not alarmed”. Nevertheless, he said Australians were “entitled to demand explanations and contrition” and to want high levels of confidence when entering into agreements with big tech companies such as OpenAI. Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it’ll be Nick Visser with the main action.