Australia news LIVE: Chalmers to reveal $6 billion budget boost ahead of interest rate decision; Cybersecurity experts say government blew OpenAI breach out of proportion

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By Emily Kaine

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news this Monday, September 28. Here’s what is making headlines today.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will reveal a $6 billion budget boost today as he faces internal pressure to curb inflation ahead of the Reserve Bank’s likely decision to raise interest rates to a 15-year-high. The final budget figures are expected to show that the underlying deficit is about $6 billion lower than the $28.3 billion initially forecast at the time of the budget in May.
Australia will press criminal charges against OpenAI if possible, senior government ministers say, after a rogue AI agent broke into the Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal back in June. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese dismissed claims he kept the hack secret until a politically opportune moment as “nonsense”, after critics noted he made the announcement while in New York for the United Nations General Assembly where he was due to make an address about the risks of AI.
Meanwhile, cybersecurity experts and tech investors have accused the Albanese government of blowing the breach out of proportion, arguing that the website’s code was set up to send data to anyone with the skills to request it.
Members of violent international extremism networks are coercing young Australians into harming themselves while evading authorities as they move across online platforms under multiple aliases, Swedish court documents obtained by this masthead have revealed. Australian law enforcement officials are racing to dismantle the networks they say are driving the rise of online harm to young people.