Australia news LIVE: Further interest rate hikes ahead as inflation rate jumps to 4 per cent; Shoebridge elected as new Greens leader

Updated September 30, 2026 — 10:12am,first published September 30, 2026 — 6:45am

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news this Wednesday, September 30. Here’s what is making headlines today.

• Yesterday the Reserve Bank hiked interest rates to 4.6 per cent, marking a 15-year-high, despite rising unemployment, falling house prices and sluggish economic growth. RBA governor Michele Bullock said Australia was being impacted by “domestic capacity pressures” as well as extraordinary shocks, including the ongoing Iran war, spending on AI, and a lack of productivity. Bullock warned there could be more hikes on the way.
• Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government took responsibility for its role in managing inflation, but continued to blame continuous interest rate hikes on the war in the Middle East. Meanwhile, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson called for Chalmers to resign following yesterday’s rate decision, and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said it was a “dark day” for mortgage holders.
• A parliamentary leadership battle is brewing in the Greens party this week after outgoing leader Larissa Waters stepped down amid ongoing illness. On one side is a joint ticket of Mehreen Faruqi and Nick McKim, on the other is Sarah Hanson-Young. David Shoebridge has not ruled out contesting.

• And Anthropic has warned investors that its technology could pose “existential risks to humanity” as it prepares to list on the sharemarket. The AI company warned in the prospectus for its planned initial public offering (IPO) filing that its models could exhibit unpredictable behaviours including attempts to “resist shutdown”, to “conceal or manipulate information” and behaviour “resembling blackmail”.

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will hold a press conference in Victoria. Follow along with our livestream here.

Staying with the assistant treasurer’s appearance on ABC TV this morning, Mulino said balancing the cyber threats posed by AI while at the same time considering how best to deploy AI to bolster Australia’s cybersecurity was “a constant work in progress”.

“It’s almost a battle on both sides. There’s AI being used in terms of creating cyber threats, and there’s AI on the defence side. So it’s a constant process that we need to undertake,” he said.

“I think that what was highlighted with the Medicare breach is that we do need to lean in more in this area. Fortunately, no sensitive data was stolen, but I think the fact that AI, so OpenAI, has apologised is a very good sign.”

Mulino said the government’s parliamentary inquiry on artificial intelligence was an important step in the process of ensuring Australia’s preparedness to tackle AI threats.

“It shows the government is bringing AI right to the centre of decision making and the coordination of policy.”

The Labor government is doing “all it can” to help bring down inflation in Australia, Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino has insisted, as he cited international pressures outside of the government’s control as the main factors driving inflation.

“If you look at the Reserve Bank governor’s statement yesterday explaining the reasons for the decisions, the two major things that were identified were the longer than expected duration of the war in the Middle East, and the fact that it has had a greater than expected impact on world energy prices,” he told ABC TV this morning.

He said the government had pulled back on spending to push down inflation.

“In the last budget, for example, we put in place $64 billion of saves over the forward estimates. We’ve really pulled back on government spending, so that we are doing all we can to support the measures of the Reserve Bank in pulling back inflation.”

Inflation data for August will be released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics later this morning.

The head of Australia’s cybersecurity body said the country was world-leading in its engagement with private AI firms, saying it had been working with OpenAI and Anthropic for six months to access advanced technology.

Australian Signals Directorate director-general Abigail Bradshaw said Australia had a “rare level of engagement” with frontier labs because of its alliance with the United States through Five Eyes.

“We have been engaged with those labs for the last six months, in utilising those leading edge, world-leading technologies, actually to fortify a number of systems of government significance, but also critical infrastructure providers,” she told Radio National.

She said the work with the labs was a new era of cooperation because they were with private entities.

Deputy Opposition Leader Jane Hume says Labor’s failure to boost productivity had left Australia exposed to international events.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been pointing to the US war on Iran and the global oil shock as key drivers of inflation after Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock hiked rates again yesterday.

“What [the government] really needs to do, and Michele Bullock has been saying this, is drive productivity,” Hume told Radio National this morning.

“The real issue here is whether your economy is resilient enough to be able to handle those international shocks,” she said.

“This particular rate rise, which we know has taken the cash rates to its highest level in 15 years, has demonstrated that Jim Chalmers has been found out as the emperor who has no clothes. He has been unable to control the domestic factors using the fiscal levers. That means that Michele Bullock, as the independent governor of the Reserve Bank, has had to pull the monetary policy levers.”

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has delivered a scathing rebuke of the Coalition’s economic record as she defended her government’s spending decisions following yesterday’s rate hike.

Appearing on a regular TV panel with Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie this morning, O’Neil said the Coalition had repeatedly promised to deliver budget surpluses when it was in government, but had consistently failed to do so.

“The truth is that the Coalition government have an atrocious record when it comes to government spending. We arrived in office with inflation running at higher than 6 per cent and growing, with more than trillion dollars of debt,” she told Seven’s Sunrise this morning.

“Let’s remember that, you know, the Coalition promised the Australian people we’d have a budget surplus each and every year that they were in government. They didn’t deliver a single one, but we’ve delivered two since we’ve been in office.”

Senator David Shoebridge has announced his candidacy for the Greens leadership, running on a ticket with Victorian senator Steph Hodgins-May as his deputy.

The announcement sets up a rare three-way contest in a usually collegiate Greens party room that typically seeks a consensus candidate before leadership votes.

Shoebridge and Hodgins-May will face off against Mehreen Faruqi and possible deputy Nick McKim, as well as veteran senator Sarah Hanson-Young who is currently expected to run on a leader-only ticket.

Greens MPs will meet in Sydney over the next two days for a “retreat” where they will vote for the leader after the unexpected resignation of current leader Larissa Waters. Waters cited worsening chronic kidney disease for her shock retirement.

Home Affairs has ordered all government departments and agencies undertake an urgent review to identify and fix weaknesses in cyber defences following the OpenAI Medicare breach.

Government bodies will do a rapid stocktake of their systems, aim to reduce technology supported by a risk management plan, and report back to the Department of Home Affairs. The review will prioritise the most critical systems and aims to fortify against AI-enabled threats.

Acting Home Affairs Minister Richard Marles said government systems needed to keep up with rapidly developing AI technology.

“We have a range of security IT system across government, and the level of security is relative to the information being protected. It is critical that we constantly review those security settings and the systems we have in place,” Marles said.

“We can’t wait for an old system to fail before replacing it. We need to identify vulnerabilities and deal with them before they can be exploited.”

Pressed on where the Coalition would cut spending if it were in government, the opposition leader said he would start by cutting investment in Australia’s “climate bureaucracy”, but could not provide further clarification on his colleague Tim Wilson’s claims yesterday that the Coalition would target the NDIS, aged care packages and childcare if elected.

Yesterday, the shadow treasurer said government spending on the schemes was out of control, and that they acted as “honey pots to raid”.

“There’s issues with fraud that we do see in programs,” Taylor told ABC TV this morning. “If there is fraud, we should make sure the taxpayers’ money is being used properly.”

Wilson could not say how much money would be saved by cutting these programs.

“Well, there is fraud going on. We know that, and we’ve seen that in the NDIS, and we’ve seen egregious examples. And we’ll continue to work on how much we think that is in the lead up to the election, of course.”

The Coalition would certainly seek to cut spending on climate programs and renewable energy, Taylor said.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has accused the government of failing to do its job properly after the Reserve Bank lifted interest rates to a 15-year-high yesterday.

“The point here is that the government hasn’t been doing its job in containing spending and making it easier to build and make things in this country,” he told ABC’s News Breakfast.

Yesterday, RBA governor Michele Bullock acknowledged it was a combination of domestic and international factors that had contributed to high inflation, but Taylor insisted high government spending was to blame.

“This has been homegrown inflation,” Taylor said. “Jim Chalmers will look for an excuse for everything. He wakes up each morning looking for who to blame.”

“There is very significant waste we’re seeing [in government spending] ... at a time when we’re seeing real belt tightening from households and businesses. So we need to see that kind of belt tightening from the government.”