Australia news LIVE: PM reveals OpenAI agent broke into Medicare; Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 15 years for sexual assault

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles has defended the speed of the government’s response to the OpenAI breach of the Medicare website, saying an investigation and announcement happened within a fortnight of the government becoming aware.

“If we take a step back, an email goes to effectively a public email address within Services Australia, and 14 days later we are standing before you. And in that period of time, this has been escalated through the Australian government to the highest level,” Marles said.

“Now there is a lot of information which comes into inboxes. There’s a lot of assessment that needs to be done in terms of understanding exactly what is it in an emerging context that is being spoken of here,” he said.

“There is consequence, and this is an important point, there is consequence in terms of us speaking publicly about this, but it is important for us to speak publicly in terms of in terms of public transparency in being able to stand before the Australian people right now, and to do so with a sense of confidence-not complete knowledge, but with a sense of confidence-that the impact of this particular incident was minor, albeit it is a serious incident-is really important,” Marles said.

“We needed to make sure that we could stand here with confidence to give that assurance to have gone public without all the facts at hand, or without that level of confidence would I think have been reckless, and so we are trying to have a balance here of getting this information into the public domain as quickly as possible, and it has all happened within two weeks.”