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Rob Harris

Rob Harris

National correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Canberra; former Europe correspondent and regular Inside Politics podcast guest.

Oct 20, 2026

8:06
And it's not, it's not that often we see Anthony Albanese very emotional, so perhaps that's a testament to how respected she is, I guess.
8:14
Yeah, for sure.
8:15
And, um, look, I, I think if you, uh...
8:18
I, I've followed politics obviously in Canberra for a long time and, and, and this has been an in- sort of an in issue.
8:25
MP safety's been a- an issue that's slowly sort of really, um, gathered a lot of momentum internally.
8:31
There have been MPs for, for six or seven years saying this was, this day was coming, you know.
8:36
That they have been really, um, concerned about online behavior, about the behavior of, uh, the way people speak to each other online.
10:06
So is there some feeling, uh, I don't know, or suggestion that perhaps our MPs have not been adequately protected?
1:56
What happened, and why did it take so long for the Prime Minister to tell people what took place?
2:01
Well, that, that's a very good question, and it's not only the government, but I guess it's, uh, it's AI as well.
2:07
So what we know is that around about June 18, the OpenAI agent was basically sort of scraping, uh, a Medicare statistics site, uh, and penetrated further than, uh, perhaps it should have.
2:21
Now, OpenAI found out quite a few weeks later that this has occurred.
2:25
And from what we can gather today, on around about September 10, so that's three or so months afterwards, it, it notified the government.
2:33
Now, the Prime Minister said it, it sent an email to sort of a public email address, and that's how it first found out.
2:40
Now, the Prime Minister was advised on the weekend, so it sort of means...

8 MINS LATER

10:18
How is this going to affect the internal conversations within the government?
10:18
How is this going to affect the internal conversations within the government?
10:23
Well, I think pretty much the Prime Minister has pointed to where we are now.
10:28
Look, AI is a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
10:32
To some groups, it's about Australian creatives and sort of writers and music and songwriters and cultural people.
10:40
And that probably appeals to the PM, I would say.
10:43
You know, his background...
10:45
He loves to be loved by that crowd.

5 MINS LATER

15:48
Is he a world leader on this, Robb?

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