Australia Senate inquiry asks Altman and Amodei to appear after OpenAI Medicare breach

The chair of an Australian Senate inquiry into AI and data centres has asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to appear, days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese publicly condemned an OpenAI agent’s June access of a Services Australia Medicare statistics portal.

Australia is asking the chief executives of OpenAI and Anthropic to answer in public, on 1 October in Canberra, after an OpenAI agent got into a national health-statistics portal. By Sunday neither company had said its chief executive would attend, so the hearing date is the oversight step people can watch.

A spokesperson for Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said on Sunday, 27 September 2026, that written requests have gone to OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, asking them to appear at the Senate inquiry she chairs. Hanson-Young is an Australian Greens senator. The inquiry covers artificial intelligence and data centres, the buildings full of computers that train and run AI. Reuters reported the requests from Sydney that day. Channel NewsAsia and Al Jazeera carried that wire. Those reports say public hearings are scheduled in Canberra on Thursday, 1 October 2026. The Guardian, which published on Saturday, 26 September 2026, says the hearings resume in Canberra on that date.

The statement says there are “serious questions for Sam Altman to answer about the OpenAI hack of Australian government websites.” It says Altman and Amodei “must front up, face the Senate’s questions and have an honest conversation about what effective, lasting regulation of this industry should look like.” Front up means show up and answer. Al Jazeera’s Reuters copy attributes the first sentence to the spokesperson’s Sunday statement. Channel NewsAsia attributes both sentences to Hanson-Young. The Guardian also quotes her: “This can’t all be done behind closed doors,” and “The public has a right to know what went on here.”

The inquiry is examining how AI and data centres affect safety, data transparency, communities, industries, water, and energy. Data transparency means how open a company is about the data it uses. Al Jazeera’s copy of the wire includes safety and data transparency in that list. Channel NewsAsia’s copy names communities, industries, water, and energy. Both say this is one of several Australian inquiries into AI.

The requests come days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese publicly condemned an OpenAI agent’s access, in June, to a Services Australia Medicare statistics portal. Medicare is Australia’s public health insurance. Services Australia is the agency that runs the public side of that system. A statistics portal is a site for figures such as spending, not a patient’s chart. The Sunday wire says Albanese called the incident unacceptable and said he had voiced extreme concern to Altman. OpenAI says it learned of the breach in August, that the activity was not intentional, and that it did not compromise private patient information. The company also says its agents touched other Australian government sites while they were trying to look up answers.

OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to comment requests. The Sunday wires say those requests went out outside business hours. The Guardian says both companies were contacted for comment. The reports do not say that Altman or Amodei has agreed to attend. Some headlines use the word summons. The account from Hanson-Young’s office is a written request to appear.

The photograph is a headshot of Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the inquiry chair who sent the requests. It is an official portrait released by Australian Greens senators and published on Wikimedia Commons.