Australia news LIVE: RBA expected to announce fourth rate rise this year; Greens leader Larissa Waters steps down due to illness; Trump denies asking Xi about potential US arms sales

Updated September 29, 2026 — 10:23am,first published September 29, 2026 — 6:45am

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news this Tuesday, September 29. Here’s what is making headlines today.

• The Reserve Bank is expected to hike rates for the fourth time this year as it prepares to hand down its decision this afternoon. The rise will bring Australia’s rates to a 15-year-high.
• Treasurer Jim Chalmers continues to consistently blame high levels of inflation, made worse by the war in the Middle East, for creating the economic conditions that have led to the likely hike. “We’ve got a big inflation challenge in our economy. It’s made much worse by decisions taken on the other side of the world. From an economic point of view, this war in Iran has been an absolute disaster for Australian families because they have been asked to pay a hefty price for it,” he told ABC’s 7.30 last night.
• Greens leader Larissa Waters has resigned from the top job amid a battle with chronic kidney disease. “For some time now I’ve been quietly managing chronic kidney disease alongside doing the work I love. But recently it’s taken a downturn, and I need to be honest with myself about not being invincible,” she said in a statement. The Greens will hold a secret ballot of its MPs this week to elect a new leader.

• And US President Donald Trump said he had not discussed selling arms to China, contradicting a suggestion made by his ambassador to Beijing. “I never heard of that,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office overnight.

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Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan says the government’s energy policy is one of the factors driving up inflation in Australia.

“It’s down to government spending, but it’s not just government spending. It’s also their energy policy,” he told News24.

He said high government spending combined with an energy policy focused on pursuing renewables was “hurting households like they’ve never been hurt before”.

Pressed on what the Coalition would cut if it were in government, Tehan said:

“We will cut out all Labor’s green, ideologically driven programs. Now, that will immediately start putting downward pressure on energy, and as you know, energy is a key component of our economy, and so that will also help in driving downward pressure on inflation and then interest rates.”

He could not cite a particular project or initiative he would seek to cut when asked to provide examples of the ideologically driven programs he claimed were dominating Labor’s energy policy.

OpenAI has cancelled plans to release its latest artificial intelligence model after researchers discovered safety risks during testing, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The model, called GPT-6.1 Astra, had been slated for a debut in October, the newspaper said. Saachi Jain, the company’s executive running safety systems, told the Journal that GPT-6.1 Astra regressed in two areas and wasn’t ready for release.

OpenAI has reported a series of security incidents in which its AI agents have breached outside systems, adding to broader concerns about AI slipping out of human control. The company said last week that it was pausing training on its most capable models after another escape.

The firm said at the time that it had also decided not to resume training on one particular model that broke out of an environment that was supposed to be secured and internet-free and queried an external chatbot.

It comes after the company announced it had paused training of its most advanced models last week.

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Attorney-General Michelle Rowland says copyright holders striking licensing deals with AI giants to use their content is the preferred outcome of protracted negotiations to boost data centre investment in Australia.

Labor is considering a requirement for artists, musicians and authors to opt out if they do not want their work scraped by AI, but creators have slammed the proposal as a weakening of copyright law.

“The first best option in all of this is for voluntary licensing arrangements to be struck,” Rowland told Radio National.

“The other aspects that are on the table is around making sure that we’ve got appropriate penalties in place where that has been breached. I think the important thing here is we are looking to strengthen copyright protections for Australian artists.”

Rowland reiterated the government had ruled out a text and data mining exemption “but we are looking for workable options”.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland says it will be easier to regulate artificial intelligence giants if they operate onshore.

A federal taskforce into the OpenAI Medicare breach is weighing up whether Australia’s laws are fit for purpose to enable prosecution or litigation of tech giants whose agents go rogue.

“If they are operating in Australia, we can regulate more easily. If they come under our laws and safeguards, and we’re able to provide service within jurisdiction, then that presents itself as a more straightforward option,” Rowland told Radio National.

She pointed to digital platforms challenging the jurisdiction of the eSafety commissioner – such as Elon Musk’s X – as evidence of the complicated nature of international giants operating locally.

Liberal MP Aaron Violi says the only way Australia will be able to defend itself from cyberattacks is to obtain the best frontier artificial intelligence models from the United States.

“Many of the big four banks, many large organisations, are using AI tools to identify risks and patch those risks in their company because, in a very simple way, AI allows users to find vulnerabilities that the human eye can’t see,” the opposition’s spokesman for the digital economy and cybersecurity told Radio National.

“We have to embrace and use AI from a cybersecurity perspective. It’s already happening, and that’s why we need to have access to the frontier models because as they get better, the ability to defend gets better, but also the ability to attack obviously improves as well.”

Violi said the joint select committee on artificial intelligence, which he sits on, would examine how strong to make mandatory reporting requirements for breaches after OpenAI agents got into a Medicare portal, as well as how government departments could better communicate a breach.

“[The Medicare breach] looks like it’s on the relatively minor end. But we can improve that process, particularly if it is a major situation that we’re dealing with in the future,” he said.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has defended the government’s near-record tax haul, insisting it is still lower than the Howard government two decades ago, and saying further income tax cuts are on the way.

Tax receipts as a proportion of GDP rose to 24.1 per cent in budget figures released yesterday, just under the 24.2 per cent under Howard.

Most of the $6 billion improvement to the budget deficit came from higher tax receipts from personal investments and super funds.

Chalmers said tax as a proportion of GDP would be even higher had Labor not cut taxes.

“It’s still lower than what we saw under Howard and [former treasurer Peter] Costello,” Chalmers told Radio National.

“There are more tax cuts already in the budget on the way. So we’re cutting income taxes because we recognise that’s a good way to help people with the cost of living.”

The government and the Reserve Bank want to see the same outcomes for the Australian economy, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says, as he continues to reject commentary that pits him against RBA governor Michele Bullock.

Asked whether the primary focus of the government was taming inflation rather than maintaining low unemployment, Chalmers told ABC Radio National:

“We see them as two important objectives ... they’re equally important in the Reserve Bank’s mandate, dual mandate, which talks about maintaining full employment at the same time as they go for price stability, which means, you know, inflation in the target band. So, in that regard, whether it’s the government or the Reserve Bank, we want to see unemployment as low as possible, consistent with inflation at more normal levels.

“It’s a key focus of the government, and no doubt it’s a key focus of the Reserve Bank’s meeting yesterday and today.”

But he said the government would not be satisfied with an outcome that sees the unemployment rate rise, after Bullock warned it may be the only way to bring down high inflation.

“We’re not for higher unemployment. I think that’s pretty clear.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned against making comparisons with other economies as the RBA prepares to hand down its interest rate decision later today.

Chalmers acknowledged that while inflation was difficult to manage because of global factors such as the war in Iran, Australia was tracking well on other economic measures.

“Inflation and interest rates are going up right around the world … if you want to make comparisons with other countries, you’ve got to make the full comparison,” he told Seven’s Sunrise this morning.

“We’ve got stronger economic growth than almost every major advanced economy, stronger jobs growth than the major advanced economies. We’ve got lower debt, much lower debt than the major advanced economies. And so, when you make those comparisons, it’s important to make the whole comparison.”

Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson says a Coalition government will seek to make savings by cutting back on NDIS, aged care and childcare, as he argues spending on the schemes is out of control.

“The key thing we need to do to address the problem of inflation is to get government spending down. The problem we’ve got at the moment is the government keeps stoking inflation by spending at a state and a federal level, and as a consequence, it’s forcing the hand of the Reserve Bank, which is leading them to these increases in interest rates,” he told ABC’s News Breakfast.

Wilson said the schemes were “honey pots for people to raid”.

“The National Disability Insurance Scheme, home aged care packages, and other schemes, like we’ve got phantom children enrolled in childcare. Those schemes need to be controlled.”

He could not say how much money might be saved by taking this approach or what areas of the schemes he would seek to cut.

The government made sweeping changes to the NDIS in its May budget, which will save $37.8 billion over the next four years.

Independent senator David Pocock said government spending was a contributing factor to high inflation as he warned that energy companies were taking advantage of Australian consumers in a time of economic hardship.

“Clearly, government spending is part of this. You can’t blame it all on the war in the Middle East,” he told Nine’s Today show this morning.

“But one of the things that I get frustrated that we’re not talking enough about is: if you look at the profits that these big gas multinationals are making, if you look at the profits that Ampol has announced, you know, almost 500 per cent increase in profits at a time where Australians are paying through the nose for petrol and diesel in this country, that should be unacceptable.”

Pocock reiterated his calls for a windfall profits tax which would seek to recoup some of the profits taken by gas and energy multinationals such as Ampol and Woodside during major geopolitical or supply chain shocks.