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New South Wales Transport Minister David Elliott has announced he will leave state politics at the next election rather than enter a factional preselection campaign.

Elliott confirmed last night he is quitting ahead of the NSW election next March.

He explained he decided to withdraw from a preselection battle following the abolition of his seat in Sydney's north-west. He had previously contested the safe Liberal seat of Baulkham Hills in Sydney.

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"With the abolition of my Baulkham Hills electorate and advice that I cannot be accommodated in the new seat of Castle Hill on factional grounds, I have today advised my community that I will not be recontesting the 2023 state election," Elliott said in a statement.

Elliott, 52, is the latest senior NSW Coalition MP to announce his retirement.

Infrastructure Minister Rob Stokes, Corrections Minister Geoff Lee and Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello previously said they were standing down.

Elliott has recently been involved in the dispute with the NSW Rail, Tram and Bus Union about a new enterprise agreement.

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Looking back on his 12 years in state parliament, he paid tribute to the support of his wife and two sons.

"To Nicole, Lachlan and William. The burden of public life is heaviest on those we love," Elliott said.

"Whilst the boys and I have always had a good giggle at the emotion and thought invested into the 'constructive feedback' I've sometimes attracted, I know Nicole often took it personally. Her loyalty has been inspirational."

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The upcoming federal budget will "build a better future" for all Australians, according to Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

Speaking exclusively with Nine's Political Editor Charles Croucher on Weekend Today, ahead of Tuesday's budget, Chalmers said the budget would contain a blow-out in social security pay-outs.

Chalmers said it would be an extra $33 billion over the next four years.

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"We do recognise that times are very, tough right now and so the indexation that kicks in will be substantial," Chalmers said.

"About one-third of that $33 billion will be age pension, another third of it will be JobSeeker payments. We know that people would always like us to do a bit more but we can only promise what we can afford.

"So our cost of living relief is deliberately targeted and timed in a way to not add to these inflationary pressures and we don't want anything on Tuesday night to be counter-productive."

The primary focus of the budget is the cost-of-living crisis, Chalmers said.

He said the budget was "solid, sensible and suited to the times".

"The fact that inflation will be higher for longer than we would like to see, our responsibility is to not make that situation worse and provide that cost-of-living relief in areas like child care," he told Croucher.

"(The budget) will back families, build a better future and I hope it will bring Australians together around some of these big economic challenges we are confronted (with) today."

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Couples will also soon be assessed on their combined income to be eligible for the Commonwealth's paid parental leave scheme, Chalmers said.

In the past, if people earned more than $150,000, they were not eligible for the previous scheme in its entirety.

However, couples will now be assessed on dual income, meaning if they earn less than $350,000 combined, they will be eligible. The move will impact nearly 200,000 families.

"This will be a family-friendly budget," Chalmers said.

"I hope people see it as a budget for the whole country, a budget which does more than batten down the hatches, it actually brings people together, builds a better future and backs in family."

Chalmers conceded the government would be forced to rein in spending.

He said the budget would reflect a "more responsible approach" to spending.

"I think people understand if you spray cash around indiscriminately in an un-targeted way, you can make the inflation problem worse and can make interest rates go up more than they would otherwise go up," he said.

"We are very conscious of that."

Watch the full interview between Charles Croucher and Jim Chalmers in the video player above.

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Karapan Sapi is a traditional Indonesian bull racing festival held on Madura Island, Indonesia. Bulls are decorated with flowers, gold, and fabrics and accompanied by traditional gamelan music, food, and wagers on the outcome of the race.

Eighty years ago, thousands of Australian troops fought in a fearsome desert battle in North Africa that helped turn the tide of World War II.

Britain's great wartime leader Winston Churchill summed up the significance of the Battle of El Alamein fought on Egypt's northern coast from October 23, 1942.

"Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat," he said of the battle.

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Craig Tibbitts, senior historian at the Australian War Memorial, says El Alamein, which pitted the British-led Eighth Army against the Afrika Corps, was an event that changed the course of history.

"It was the turning point in the North Africa campaign and is up there with the battles of Stalingrad in Russia and Midway in the Pacific theatre as a defining battle of the entire war," he told 9News.

Here is a look at how the Battle of El Alamein unfolded and its impact.

Why was it important?

German general Erwin Rommel – known as "the Desert Fox" – had led his Afrika Corps army to major victories over the British commanded Eighth Army, forcing them back to the village of El Alamein, about 260km west of the Egyptian city of Cairo.

From July, 1942, the Eighth Army managed to stall Rommel's forces, but a defeat at El Alamein would put British control of the Suez Canal, a vital route for shipping to Australia and India, as well as valuable Middle East oil fields at risk.

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Who were the Australian troops involved?

The Australian 9th Division, made up of infantry, artillerymen, tank crews and engineers as well as support troops, was part of the multi-national Eighth Army, commanded by British General Bernard Montgomery.

Pilots and air crew from the Royal Australian Air Force were also part of the Desert Air Force supporting the ground forces.

"The Eighth Army was a true Commonwealth force … it had British, Australian, New Zealand soldiers but also other nations including Egyptians, Greeks and French troops," Tibbitts said.

By October 1942, the Eighth Army outnumbered their German and Italian enemies by the ratio two to one in tanks and aircraft.

With Rommel's suffering vital shortages in manpower and supplies including fuel, Montgomery planned a decisive attack at El Alamein.

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What role did the Australians play?

After the battle started with a massive artillery barrage by more than 800 field guns, Montgomery ordered the Australian 9th Division to switch their attack north.

A week of fierce fighting followed, with the Australians grinding their way forward over well-defended enemy positions, taking key positions such as Thompson's Post, the Fig Orchard, the Blockhouse and the Saucer.

The Australian attack tied up all of Rommel's best troops, enabling the British, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans, French and Poles to make a major breakthrough and force the enemy back.

But it came at a high cost; more than 1000 Australian troops were killed and some 3600 injured during the fighting.

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What impact did the battle have?

By November 1942, the German and Italian forces were in full retreat, while the El Alamein victory proved a major boost for Allied morale.

"It came after so many defeats in the opening years of the war … the success at El Alamein did a lot for lifting morale in Australia and Britain," Tibbitts said.

Although there was more than two years of hard fighting to go until Nazi Germany was defeated, the seeds of Allied success were sown in the North African battle.

"Churchill summed up its importance with his words at the time when he said El Alamein was the 'end of the beginning ' in World War II."



There's an old graveyard that lurks thousands of kilometres beneath the most remote part of the planet, nowhere near any form of civilisation.

For decades, remains have been dumped there which now lie scattered along the floor of the Pacific Ocean – but they aren't human. 

Some 3,000 kilometres east of New Zealand and tucked between Antarctica and South America, this spot is the furthest from any land that you'll find.

In fact, it's so far from the closest humans that those nearest by are actually onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The spot is called Point Nemo and it's where space agencies like NASA have dumped their discarded space junk since 1971.

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Due its extremely isolated location, it's been deemed the "safest" space on the planet for these controlled dumps, which are hurled from thousands of nautical miles from the thermosphere above.

"Most things burn up on re-entry, depending how fast it's going and what material it's made out of," astronomer Dr Sara Webb told 9News.com.au.

"But when there's the risk that there could be a substantial amount of other material left behind – even a few kilos – you want it to land as far away from humans as possible, so Point Nemo is perfect for that.

"It's roughly 2,800 kilometres away from any human being on the planet – it's an extraordinarily safe spot."

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Webb said that depending on the type of material that's being ejected back into the earth's atmosphere above, humans can actually remotely control where it'll land.

"So, if it's got fuel and it's thrustable, you can totally direct it more readily," she said.

"If it doesn't have fuel though, or it's something that you can't communicate with, then you have no option.

"You can't really do much with it but leave it in the orbit and wait for it to naturally decay down."

But, leaving the material in orbit can mean they'll become dangerous, and even deadly if they were to collide with any future human missions.

"In the future, in the not too distant future actually, we'll be able to have satellites that go and grab other dead satellites and then throw them back into our orbit," Webb said.

"In the next 10 years or so we'll start to see very slick things like that.

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"But the risk is, things that are in our orbit are travelling stupidly fast, insane speeds of tens of thousands of kilometres an hour sometimes.

"And when it's metal, if you throw two pieces of metal together at incredible speeds – and it's in the freezing cold space – they can kind of like spot weld themselves together and could cause chaos."

Thankfully, spacecrafts and other discarded pieces of space junk are also able to be moved up into an "orbit graveyard".

However, the astrophysisist, from Swinburne University, said it's "getting crowded" up there, so bringing objects back to Earth, to Point Nemo, is the most sustainable option.

"We might stick things out in the orbit graveyard and they might be good for 50 to 200 years, depending how far away they are, but it's not there forever," Webb said.

"It will always need readjusting at some point. So I think that's why we've got to be smart."

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The United States, Russia, Japan, and other European nations with space agencies have used the location to dump some 263 pieces of debris since 1971, according to a 2019 report by NASA.

The deep sea cemetery will also soon become the final resting place of the ISS, when it's eventually decommissioned in 2030.

Although it's won't serve as the resting place for space junk for eternity, Webb said Point Nemo is working perfectly well for the time being.

It even has a very minimal impact on the environment.

"At Point Nemo, because it doesn't get any of the nutrients washed off from the coasts around the Pacific Ocean, almost no nutrients make it to this point," she said.

"And so there's very, very little life that is living there naturally. The environmental risk is very low.

"There's only about 260 different objects that have been landed there, so it's not thousands of things continuously.

"It is actually used quite responsibly."

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