Anthony Albanese has denied his government sat on knowledge of OpenAI Medicare hack to announce it when it suited him politically, describing scepticism around the timeline as “nonsense” and insisting he acted “as soon as possible”.

The Prime Minister insisted he “absolutely” made the AI breach public as soon as possible and claimed that he only found out about it while he was in New York — days after a key Labor frontbencher was informed.

“It’s just nonsense. We were informed of this late,” the PM said in a sit-down interview with News24 while in the US.

“That’s one of the issues that I raised with Sam Altman when I spoke with him yesterday. I was informed while I’ve been in New York.

“This was a unique situation. We had to ascertain the facts and then we made the statements as a matter of urgency.”

The PM had flown out of Australia last Friday after a sitting day in Canberra on Thursday.

Before travelling to New York over the weekend he had visited Apple executive chairman Tim Cook in California on Saturday AEST.

By the Prime Minister’s timeline, his senior minister Katy Gallagher would have found out days before him and seemingly not passed it on to her boss.

The Labor Senator had told a press conference in Sydney on Thursday that she had found out on September 17, which was the last day of the Parliament sitting week.

During the Sydney briefing dedicated to the OpenAI hack, Senator Gallahgher explained that OpenAI had contacted Services Australia on September 10.

She said it then took until September 15 for the department to escalate it to the Australian Signals Directorate — the Federal intelligence agency responsible for cybersecurity.

“Once Services Australia had analysed the information in the email and made some checks, they notified the incident to ASD,” Senator Gallahgher said.

“Following that, I was advised around the 17th of September, and undertook, and sought further information.

“Then over the course of the weekend, that was late last week, I had a number of discussions both with the DPM and the Minister for Home Affairs and Services Australia and ASD.”

Opposition leader Angus Taylor said Labor must explain how an AI agent gained unauthorised access to a Services Australia system and why the Government did not detect it.

He questioned why it took until September 24 for Australians to be informed of the serious cyber incident.

“Seven days passed between a Minister being told about this incident and Australians being told about it. The government needs to explain why,” Mr Taylor said.

“This incident is a serious warning about the security of our government systems in the age of AI.

“The Prime Minister gave a keynote address just a few months ago on AI and didn’t mention cyber defence.”

Mr Albanese claimed on Friday that the Opposition had received appropriate briefings on the incident and hit back at Mr Taylor’s criticisms.

“He needs to act more like a responsible leader of an alternative government if he’s going to be taken seriously,” the PM said.

Mr Albanese also insisted he had to “ascertain the facts” before revealing the AI agent hack publicly — to ensure it wouldn’t create “a great deal of anxiety”.

“My Government was determined to act. To act as soon as possible to ascertain the facts were important, rather than go off half-cocked,” he said.

“That would have created a great deal of anxiety, which was unnecessary.”

Mr Albanese has also confirmed the Government has sought urgent advice on whether Australian Federal Police should investigate the breach as a criminal matter.

Senior Labor Senator Murray Watt said a new taskforce established to investigate the recent AI hack and how reported cyber incidents are handled in Federal departments, would also examine if Australia’s laws were up-to-date.

“We think it’s completely unacceptable,” he told Sunrise.

“If it is possible to press criminal charges, that will happen.

“We have commissioned a task force to do an investigation of this event

“One of the things that they’ll be looking at is whether these matters can be referred to the Australian Federal Police under current Australian law.

“If that is possible to happen, then that will happen.

“If it’s not possible, then clearly that indicates that we need to change Australian laws, and that’s what we’ll be doing.

“We do need to ensure that Australian laws are keeping pace with this new and emerging technology.”

The incident marks the world’s first known instance of an AI agent autonomously breaching a government website to independently access private data.

The agent also interacted with sites belonging to the Victorian Department of Health, NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

However, the PM said they were still investigating the extent of the interactions and if they too contained a breach of non-public files.

Mr Albanese also discussed the hack during a fireside chat with Kevin Rudd for the Asia Society in New York and said the AI agent had been “ferreting away” collecting information when it hit cyber blocks from Services Australia before finding a way around the

“We’re going to see some discussion of what the global architecture looks like for this. Whether it’s a model like the International Atomic Energy Agency or some other model … people will work that through,” he said.

“But I think there is an element of urgency required as well because this technology is moving very, very fast, and we need to make sure that we have a responsibility to keep on top of it.”