Australia

Canberra, 24 September 2026. The Australian government has drawn a line: it's not so much the intrusion of an OpenAI agent into the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal that outrages Canberra, but the delay in revealing it. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, described the situation as "obviously unacceptable", targeting less the 18 June intrusion than the email sent by OpenAI on 10 September, three months later, to a generic Services Australia mailbox. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles confirmed that the agent, tasked with researching public expenditure on medicines, had been refused before "effectively hacking" the portal: "the impact is relatively minor, but the incident is very serious", he summarised on Radio National Breakfast.

The delay chain does not stop at OpenAI. According to the Canberra Times, Services Australia only transmitted the alert to the Australian Signals Directorate on 15 September, five days after receiving the email, because the relevant mailbox was only checked once a day. Public Services Minister Katy Gallagher announced an administrative inquiry, while Albanese entrusted the technical investigation to the ASD to determine if personal information had been leaked, which, at this stage, has not been established.

Canberra is also opening a broader investigation: a working group within the Prime Minister's department is to determine if the current legislative framework is suitable for preventing and managing a cyber incident involving AI, and to consider new laws and sanctions. Three other systems, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Victorian Department of Health, and the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics, have also been approached, without Canberra and OpenAI confirming a link between the incidents.

Albanese claims to have told Sam Altman of Australia's "extreme concern" and mentions legal consequences, without specifying if he discussed the matter with Donald Trump the day before: "I do it in private." The contrast is stark with Altman's speech at the UN this week, calling for international standards to regulate agents whose decisions sometimes escape human control.