24 SEPTEMBER 2026

The Greens NSW are demanding the NSW Government immediately conduct an audit of all government systems and databases to check for data breaches or interference. This follows confirmation that OpenAI has deliberately released an artificial intelligence agent to conduct so-called internet-based research into public medicine, which resulted in the OpenAI agent breaking into and gaining unauthorised access to the public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, where it accessed public and private files and wrote files to an internal Services Australia server.

The Prime Minister this morning confirmed other government systems may also have been affected, including the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.

Quotes attributable to Abigail Boyd, Greens NSW Spokesperson for Industry:

“We need an urgent, forensic, and wide-ranging digital audit of all NSW Government systems to make sure similar breaches have not occurred. We clearly cannot rely on these multinational big tech companies to comply with even the most minimal of social obligations such as notifying when, or even taking enough care to notice if, their products are hacking government systems.

“We are told to believe that OpenAI only became aware of this egregious breach of Australian’s data in August, and then waited until well into September before sending a notification email to Services Australia in September. By all accounts, there has been no attempt by OpenAI to notify the NSW Government of the potential breaches of our state systems and databases.

“This is frankly outrageous, after the NSW Government made such a huge song and dance about welcoming OpenAI to open an office in Sydney. You would have thought that someone in that Sydney office could have picked up the phone, or even walked just a few blocks across the CBD, and let someone know what had happened. But that is clearly too much to ask for this arrogant company, that refuses to appear in front of NSW Parliamentary inquiries and now seemingly refuses to even notify the Government that they may have been hacked by one of their products.

“BOCSAR is not the only vulnerable source of potentially sensitive information, the NSW Government hosts highly sensitive information through public-facing websites like the HealthStatsNSW website, as well as the Data.NSW website which is an open data portal hosting 17,164 NSW public sector datasets.

“The NSW Government is extremely vulnerable to these attacks from malicious artificial intelligence products. The Auditor General’s ‘Cyber Security Insights 2025’ report found significant and systemic cyber security vulnerabilities across most NSW Government agencies. The NSW Labor Government has subsequently failed to invest in vital cybersecurity upgrades that would keep our data safer.

“The Greens obtained internal government documents that showed the Office of the Minister for Industry and Trade watering down a media release they felt was excessively effusive about the entrance of OpenAI to Australia, citing concerns of AI going rogue. It would seem that particular government advisor was startlingly prescient, if unfortunately otherwise ignored, as this government has pursued a let it rip approach to AI and the Data Centres that fuel them.”