Australia news live: Mike Baird resigns as Cricket Australia chair; Paramedics to lead in Victoria mental health call outs

Key events

Federal treasurer Jim Chalmers and minister for finance Katy Gallagher are speaking to the press about the final budget outcome for the 2025-2026 financial year.

Chalmers says the final budget outcome showed the deficit came in “$6 billion better than expected”.

He says:

We have made a lot of progress in the Budget and we have made more progress since then, but we know that there is more work to do. The bottom-line is better than we inherited, better than it was at the election and better than it was forecast to be in May. It is now around half the deficit for the year just finished, compared to when we came to office.

Cafes and shoppers at a crossroads as surcharge ban looms

A ban on card surcharges is supposed to deliver savings for Australian shoppers, but the reality could be quite different if retailers raise prices and the banks claw back losses by axing rewards.

AAP reports that the reform, driven by the Reserve Bank of Australia, comes into effect from Thursday, when anyone paying with a debit or credit card will be spared the surprise of extra charges at the till.

Under the new rules, retailers must either absorb the cost or build it into their prices.

They could also offer a discount for cash or payment services such as PayID, which some experts think could lead to savings of up to 10% off the transaction price.

However, dealing in cash means keeping a float and taking it to the bank at the end of the day, which can be difficult given the general decline in branches across the country, and does lay a burden on small business owners.

For those sticking to tap and go, there’s a good chance some businesses will raise prices to offset the merchant fees they still pay to the banks and payment providers to process those payments, which they used to recoup under surcharges.

You can read more on what the changes might mean for you here:

Australia is run on legacy systems that AI agents can easily exploit, former UN cyber negotiator warns

Ageing computer systems used throughout Australia’s government and large sections of the economy are easily exploited by AI agents, increasing the risk that sensitive information could be compromised, Australia’s former chief UN cyber negotiator has warned.

As the government urgently undertakes a forensic investigation into a rogue OpenAI agent accessing Medicare data, the AI expert and Tech Policy Design Institute executive director, Johanna Weaver, said huge vulnerabilities existed across older IT systems. She said:

It is old legacy systems that present the huge vulnerabilities, because large amounts of information and data is stored on these systems that have been around since the beginning of the internet

Read more here:

Here’s what the bogong moths looked like recently in Central Tilba, NSW

Australians report biggest bogong moth sightings in years

More on Mike Baird’s resignation as Cricket Australia chair …

Mike Baird has sensationally quit as Cricket Australia chair, after his own state association refused to back their representative in the fallout over the privatisation of Big Bash League clubs, AAP reports.

The decision comes after Baird lost the support of Cricket NSW, with the country’s most powerful state unhappy with the decision to allow private investment.

Baird had served as NSW’s representative on the board, and approached them recently to confirm they would not support him in the current circumstances.

He did have the option of moving into an independent role, but AAP has been told Baird did not wish to continue without the support of all states.

Baird’s exit comes after Cricket NSW slammed the decision to allow privatisation earlier this month.

“This decision risks leaving cricket in NSW and Australia strategically and financially worse off, with direct consequences for our ability to invest in grassroots cricket,” a Cricket NSW statement read earlier this month.

Paramedics to take the lead in Victoria mental health call outs

Paramedics will take the lead in mental health emergency call outs – not police – under a new agreement announced by Victoria’s health minister, Ingrid Stitt, this morning.

Under the new mental health crisis response protocols, signed by Ambulance Victoria, Victoria police and the health department, these call outs will be treated as a “health-led” response rather than a law-and-order matter.

Victoria’s mental health royal commission recommended in 2021 that paramedics become first responders to Triple Zero calls for mental health crises. In May, the New South Wales government accepted a similar recomendation by both a parliamentary inquiry and an internal police review.

Under the Victorian agreement, police and protective service officers will attend mental health call outs to support paramedics when needed rather than leading the initial response.

People in mental health crisis will also be transferred to hospitals by family members, mental health services, non-emergency patient transport or ambulances, rather than in the back of a police car when it is safe to do so, under the new arrangements.

Stitt said:

When someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, they deserve a response that puts their health and wellbeing first while keeping them and the community safe.

Mike Baird to step down as chair of Cricket Australia

Former NSW premier Mike Baird will step down as the chair of Cricket Australia at the body’s next annual general meeting in October.

Baird has been chair since early 2023 and led Cricket Australia’s push to privatize the Big Bash Leagues clubs. Both NSW and Queensland have opposed the plan.

In a statement, Baird said:

I believe Australian cricket continues to be well led by the CA Board. Their mix of significant experience and passion for the game gives me great confidence for the future. …

I have been incredibly proud to play a role in the oversight of cricket on the CNSW Board and, over the past six years, the CA Board, including almost four as chair.

David Boon, a former Test batter, will take over as interim chair on 28 October as a process to find a new full-time chair begins.

RBA expected to hike cash rate to 4.6%, its highest level since 2011

Australia’s key interest rate is expected to hit its highest level since 2011, drag down house prices and add more than $100 to typical monthly mortgage repayments.

The Reserve Bank board is poised to hike the cash rate from 4.35% to 4.6% on Tuesday, which would be the fourth increase in 2026 and push typical home loan interest rates to 6.5%.

For someone with an average-sized new mortgage of $731,000, now paying a rate of 6.2%, an increase would add about $119 to their $4,477 monthly repayments. That would take the total rise in repayments since January to nearly $480.

Read more here:

Double murder trial of Beau Lamarre-Condon to resume

A police officer’s double-murder trial is set to resume with a close confidant continuing in the witness box, AAP reports.

Beau Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, suggesting the two men died after two separate struggles in Baird’s house.

Close friend Georgia Cook will give evidence when the trial enters its second week on Monday. On Friday, Cook recounted a dinner the pair had in May 2023, when Lamarre-Condon propositioned her.

“What would you do if I told you I killed somebody?” Cook told the jury he said to her. “Would you help me hide the body?”

As well as contesting the two murder charges, Lamarre-Condon denies breaking into Baird’s home in August 2023 while disguised.

Lamarre-Condon’s barrister has conceded his client did some “stupid things” but disputes he exhibited threatening behaviours before the fatal incident in the Paddington terrace.

More than 100 witnesses are expected to be called during the 12-week trial, including dozens of police officers and friends and family of the three men. More than 20 were called in the trial’s opening week.

Victoria government delays level crossing removals, promises to duplicate Upfield line

The Victorian Labor government will delay the removal of eight level crossings in Brunswick, saving the budget $686m, while promising to duplicate the train line and increase services if re-elected in November.

The premier, Ben Carroll, and treasurer, Colin Brooks, will today announce the plan to defer the eight level crossing removals on the Upfield line, to coincide with track duplication.

Former premier Daniel Andrews had promised to remove the level crossings in 2022, with a completion date of 2027 that was later pushed back to 2030. Now, the government says they won’t be complete until 2033.

If re-elected in November, Labor will use some of the savings to begin work on building a second track on the train line between Gowrie and Upfield stations.

Currently, the 4km section of the line runs on a single track that the government says creates bottlenecks and delays for passengers. While commuters on most other metropolitan train lines wait less than 10 minutes, those of on the Upfield line can wait for up to 20 minutes even during the mornings and afternoons.

Carroll said duplicating the line will allow for turn-up-and-go services:

Fifty percent more capacity on the line, for turn-up-and-go services – that’s a huge change for the northern suburbs.

Doing it in one go reduces costs and minimises disruption for passengers. It’s common sense.

A dog needing a fence: Medicare breach reveals AI issue

Nobody should be surprised when an artificial intelligence agent goes off the rails, because it was never really on them in the first place, an AI expert says.

AAP reports an OpenAI breach of a Medicare statistics website made global headlines when the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, disclosed it on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The incident has sent Canberra scrambling to fortify digital infrastructure, but something more fundamental needs to change in AI behaviour, Dr Chetan Arora, a cybersecurity expert, told AAP.

He compared autonomous AI models to dogs being trained not to leave a yard.

“…I can train my dog by means of punishment and reward for not crossing the boundary of my home [or the] the second way is actually putting the fence and deterring the dog,” Arora said.

What was missing in these systems is this engineering approach of building the fence.

OpenAI has stressed it did not direct its agent to infiltrate the website in order to perform the innocuous research task it had been set.

The bot interacted normally with three Australian federal and state government sites, but broke into the Medicare statistics portal when offered resistance.

Policing autonomous agents did not require a human watching a model’s every move, but there needed to be a clear framework with flesh-and-blood input and stringent reporting obligations, Arora said.

A task force set up after the breach to examine AI reporting obligations and Australia’s cyber-safety and legal avenues for punishing OpenAI is expected to report in a matter of weeks.

Bogong moths descend along NSW coast during annual migration

Australians along the east coast are reporting many sightings of endangered bogong moths as the insects continue their long migration towards the country’s alpine regions.

Bogong moths, about the size of a bottle cap with a distinctive dark stripe that runs down each wing behind two white spots, used to be incredibly abundant. But populations collapsed by up to 99.5% in the two years before 2019.

Zoos Victoria has a citizen science initiative called moth tracker where you can upload sightings and track the migration. Reports currently show the moths travelling from north of Newcastle all the way down the NSW south coast towards the Victorian border. They can be blown towards the coast by westerly winds and can be drawn inside homes by lights, the Australian Museum says.

Wildflower Nursery in Erina, NSW along the Central Coast, said they’ve noticed bogong moths “everywhere”.

“They’re endangered for a start, and they’re really essential nocturnal pollinators,” Natalie Sanderson, the owner of the nursery, said on social media, noting the moths have been blown off course towards the coastline en route to the Australian alps. “If we want to help them get back on track, and back to where they were headed, is turn off any non-essential nightlights around our properties and that will help them find their way back.”

People are encouraged not to kill the moths to aid population recovery.

“Noted ✍️ add ‘moth plague’ to warnings in future,” NSW SES wrote on social media.

Gallagher says final budget outcome will show $6bn improvement

Katy Gallagher and the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, are set to present the final budget outcome today, which she said will show about a $6bn improvement since the federal budget. The estimated deficit for 2025-26 in May was $28.3bn.

She told RN:

We do everything we can to make sure that the budget is in as good a shape as it can, acknowledging that we are having to find room to invest in all these areas that the Australian people care about deeply and want to see improved services in.

OpenAI breach signals a ‘new world’: Katy Gallagher

Katy Gallagher, who is also the minister for government services, is speaking this morning about the OpenAI breach of Medicare, saying we are essentially “in a new world” with the brisk advancement of technology.

She told Radio breakfast this morning:

I think this incident really adds weight to the arguments that the PM that has been putting forward about needing to legislate, to provide some protections, some guardrails, and also, you know, have an escalation pathway.

I mean, the idea that something happened in June 18th and we weren’t aware of it until the second week of September is just not acceptable.

Gallagher said mandatory reporting requirements should be imposed “at a minimum”. She said there should be consequences while acknowledging that OpenAI had been helping in the investigation after the incident.

I think we have to have a look at this incident and deal with it on its merits, but the broader question of how we deal with these in the future.

Interest rate hike looms as inflation stubbornly high

Rising unemployment, stubbornly high inflation and a looming interest rate hike are piling misery onto Australian consumers, but Labor insists better days are on the horizon, Australian Associated Press reports.

The pinch of optimism comes as mortgage holders brace for the Reserve Bank of Australia to lift the official interest rate to a near-15-year high of 4.6% on Tuesday, an outcome money markets are treating as largely a foregone conclusion.

Central bankers in the US, Japan and Europe have all pushed interest rates up since the RBA’s board met in August, all crediting their decisions to rising oil and fuel prices resulting from the increasingly intractable US-Iran war.

On Sunday the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, said the government knew households were “doing it tough” and was working to put downward pressure on inflation.

Average fuel prices in Australia’s five largest cities had risen to $2.37 per litre for petrol and $2.69 for diesel as of Wednesday, but Labor has rejected calls for it to reinstate a previous cut to fuel taxes to help ease the burden on road-users.

Inflation, which came in hotter than expected in August, could rise from 3.5 to 4% when the Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes its latest figures on Wednesday.

Read more here:

Chalmers and Gallagher to present final budget outcome

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, will present the final budget outcome on Monday, the updated accounting measure for the 2025-26 financial year.

Despite challenges facing the government, Chalmers is expected to say the figures show the budget deficit is smaller than originally forecast.

He will argue the improvements are worth billions of dollars to the budget.

Welcome

Good morning and welcome to our live news blog.

Nick Visser will join us shortly. We have budget news, interest rate hikes on the horizon and some expert views on autonomous AI and hacks.