This is local news so what they mean is that this is the first plane in the country with those characteristics. The internet makes local news sites global and it probably never even crossed their minds that someone not local would naturally make that interpretation from the headline.
That's better, except someone would then complain that "first" implies that it's the world's first and happens to be in Australia. We used your suggestion but reordered the phrases above.
Edit: actually, I think we can get around all this by just using the first sentence of the article.
