Greens AI spokesperson Shoebridge criticizes OpenAI's delay in telling the government about the Medicare portal breach
Greens AI spokesperson and Senator
“The delay between OpenAI agents hacking this site and the Australian Government being told is completely unacceptable and confirms that these corporations need to be brought to heel. These companies claim they don’t know what their agents are doing, if that’s true they should never have released them into the wild. Their recklessness is a major global risk.”
Source and context
Official statement
About this source
Media release from the Australian Greens dated September 24, 2026, with lines attributed to Acting Leader Mehreen Faruqi and to Senator David Shoebridge, the party's AI spokesperson, on the OpenAI agent's access to the Medicare statistics portal.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Reporting
About this source
ABC News live blog of reactions on September 24, 2026 to the disclosure that an OpenAI agent had accessed a Services Australia Medicare statistics portal. Its posts quote government ministers, opposition figures and the Greens.
Before the quotation
The Australian Greens issued the release on September 24, 2026, after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese disclosed the breach at a press conference in New York. The release said OpenAI waited three months before notifying the government.
After the quotation
The release also said the Greens were calling for laws that make AI companies liable when their agents break into systems, and for the US Ambassador to be summoned.
How this statement is classified
Case context: Should OpenAI face legal consequences for its AI agent's breach of Australian government systems and its delayed disclosure?
The label describes this statement’s response within the context above.
Why this label?
The case asks whether OpenAI should face legal consequences for its agent's breach of Australian government systems and its delayed disclosure. Shoebridge called the delay in telling the government completely unacceptable, said the corporations need to be brought to heel, and described the companies' recklessness as a major global risk. That expressly criticizes OpenAI's conduct and its disclosure, so we labeled it Condemned.
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Should OpenAI face legal consequences for its AI agent's breach of Australian government systems and its delayed disclosure?
Explore the case context, sources and public responses.
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Read the full case“I don't understand. Why is no one being prosecuted for this? Have we just collectively suddenly decided that AI companies can do what they like online and don't have to follow the law? Wouldn't we be prosecuted if we 'infiltrated' a government website??”Read statement
“If we were in the bricks and mortar world, if an employee of a company went and broke the law, particularly if it broke the criminal law, then that individual would suffer serious legal consequences, but so would their company. And so we need to make sure that that is true also in this era of AI”Read statement
“This should not have gone to a kind of, an email address. It should have been escalated through ASD's channels or through the senior levels of Services Australia. And my understanding is OpenAI accepted that as well.”Read statement