More than 600 ground staff at Qantas have begun a 24-hour strike across the country, in an escalating industrial dispute. Qantas has stated that it has contingency plans in place and that the impact will be most felt in cargo transport and QantasLink’s regional services.
Meanwhile, the acting prime minister, Richard Marles, has stated that the government is “looking into” whether the breach of OpenAI constitutes a criminal offence. “We will look at the legal situation in relation to this and what unauthorised access means, even if unintentional. This is one of the questions we are continuing to investigate through the working group,” Marles said.
The prime minister provided further details on the OpenAI breach to journalists this morning, stating that the company’s notification, when it finally arrived, was sent to a public mailbox. “It was 10 September before there was any notification at all. And the notification was an email sent to a public mailbox. As I said, part of the investigation will be whether there are questions to be put to the Australian Federal Police,” Albanese said. He added that the government is aware that three other systems may have been affected by the breach, including the health department’s system and another system.
The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, described the breach of OpenAI as a “serious warning” about online security in the age of artificial intelligence. In an interview with 4BC this morning, he criticised the Albanese government for not doing enough to protect the security of systems in the age of artificial intelligence. “We have a lot of personal data stored on these systems. The government must explain when it first became aware of the breach, exactly what information was accessed, what vulnerability was exploited and how it was closed,” Taylor said. He added that the government and ministers were “more obsessed with talking about their own power” than with addressing issues important to Australians, and that the safety of Australians was, he said, at the top of the list.
Ben Carroll stated that the prime minister had informed him overnight of the hacking of the Medicare system via OpenAI. “We are working on this issue and information is coming in literally as we speak. I will have more to say later,” Carroll said. “What I was able to guarantee, based on the initial information, is that personal private data had not been compromised, but we stress that these are early days in the investigation.”
Carroll held a press conference at the London Tavern in Richmond this morning to announce his election promise to allow dogs in pubs and to extend the trading hours of local businesses. “We are going in step with the times. All over Europe, pubs have long been friendly to pets. The final decision will be made by the pub, but we want our pubs to be family-friendly, where everyone can come and enjoy the company,” Carroll said.
In a separate development, a new analysis has shown that food prices have risen in all four major Australian supermarket chains, with the average price of a basket of basic goods rising by 7 per cent between March and June. The consumer group Choice published its 10th quarterly supermarket price study, funded by the state budget, which involved filling a basket with eight common products in 104 different stores in June. The basket – which contained milk, Royal Gala apples, strawberries, bananas, potatoes, avocado, basmati rice and minced beef – rose by 7 per cent in the chains of Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA from the last Choice study in March.
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