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Hundreds of nurses and midwives will stop work next week to demand the government address staff shortages and provide a bigger pay rise.

Members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association (NSWNMA) will walk off the job on Tuesday, June 28.

They said the government has failed to address staff numbers in the NSW budget.

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NSWNMA Acting General Secretary Shaye Candish said it's unclear how many full-time equivalent nurses and midwives will be added to the workforce, given Local Health Districts would be given funds to spend at their discretion.

"The sheer lack of transparency is palpable," Candish said.

"There are widespread staffing deficits right across the state now and there is no guarantee that the government's 'health workforce boost' will be utilised to plug gaps in the staffing rosters now.

"We need fundamental reform of our healthcare system.

"We need ratios, alongside transparent spending of taxpayer dollars to ensure NSW receives the right patient care, not more unaccountable cash being thrown about, without any guarantee of meaningful staffing solutions."

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They also said the one-off $3000 payment made to frontline workers last month wasn't enough.

"The 'thank you' payment does very little to recognise the sacrifices and moral injury our members endured throughout the pandemic, which we all know extends across the entire health system, not just public hospitals," Assistant General Secretary Michael Whaites said.

"Emergency departments, intensive care units, maternity, paediatrics, inpatient mental health, all of these areas and more have been significantly disrupted during the pandemic and chronic staffing shortages exposed, yet they've failed to attract a mention in this budget."

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The union said the government not addressing staff shortages leaves patients in danger.

Over 70 of the union's branches have voted to stop work next Tuesday for various hours from two to 24.

It comes as public and Catholic school teachers have made the landmark decision to hold joint industrial action next Thursday because the government only offered a three per cent pay rise in the budget.

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Victoria Police have made a high steaks bust, uncovering a huge haul of stolen meat and seafood in a car over the weekend.

Police said the man was found with more than $2000 worth of fresh produce in Cairnlea on Sunday.

The stash included salmon, prawns, chops and beef roasts.

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Police said the meat was returned to Coles in Cairnlea.

The Cheltenham man was interviewed in relation to dealing with property suspected as being proceeds of crime.

He is expected to be charged on summons.

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An earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan early this morning, killing at least 255 people, authorities said.

Information remained scarce on the magnitude 6.0 quake that struck Paktika province.

The state-run Bakhtar news agency reported the detail and said rescuers were arriving by helicopter.

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The state-run Bakhtar news agency reported the death toll and said rescuers were arriving by helicopter.

The news agency's director-general, Abdul Wahid Rayan, wrote on Twitter that 90 houses have been destroyed in Paktika and dozens of people are believed trapped under the rubble.

Footage from Paktika province near the Pakistan border showed victims being carried into helicopters to be airlifted from the area. Images widely circulating online from the province showed destroyed stone houses, with residents picking through clay bricks and other rubble.

Bakhtar posted footage of a resident receiving IV fluids from a plastic chair outside the rubble of his home and others sprawled on gurneys.

“A severe earthquake shook four districts of Paktika province, killing and injuring hundreds of our countrymen and destroying dozens of houses,” Bilal Karimi, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, wrote on Twitter.

“We urge all aid agencies to send teams to the area immediately to prevent further catastrophe.”

Neighbouring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department put the earthquake at a magnitude 6.1.

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Tremors were felt in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and elsewhere in the eastern Punjab province.

The European seismological agency, EMSC, said the earthquake’s tremors were felt over 500km by 119 million people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Mountainous Afghanistan and the larger region of South Asia, where the Indian tectonic plate collides with the Eurasian plate to the north, has long been vulnerable to devastating earthquakes.

In 2015, a major earthquake that struck the country's northeast killed over 200 people in Afghanistan and neighboring northern Pakistan.

A similar 6.1 earthquake in 2002 killed about 1,000 people in northern Afghanistan. And in 1998, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan's remote northeast killed at least 4,500 people.

The United States has banned all goods produced in China's western Xinjiang region, following the enactment of a forced labour law signed by President Joe Biden last year.

The US already had several restrictions in place for imports from Xinjiang, where rights groups say Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities have faced a raft of human rights abuses, including being placed in mass internment camps.

Under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, passed at the end of 2021, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will now block all imports made in the region. It will also block goods made by firms outside the region, whose links with Xinjiang companies or the Xinjiang government make them complicit – in the Department of Commerce's view – in forced labour practices.

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"Importers should prove to authorities with 'clear and convincing evidence' that the goods are not produced by forced labour should they want to resume the imports," the CBP said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the ban underscores the Biden administration's commitment to combating forced labour everywhere.

"We are rallying our allies and partners to make global supply chains free from the use of forced labour, to speak out against atrocities in Xinjiang, and to join us in calling on the government of the (People's Republic of China) to immediately end atrocities and human rights abuses, including forced labour," Blinken said.

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The Chinese Ministry of Commerce responded on Tuesday by saying it was "resolutely opposed" to the ban, which it said "gravely hurts the interests of companies and consumers in both countries".

"The truth is Chinese laws explicitly ban forced labour," the ministry said, adding that China will take "necessary actions" to protect its national interests.

The CBP has ramped up efforts in recent years to block goods from Xinjiang, under both the Trump and Biden administrations. In 2020, the US government announced it would block imports of cotton from Xinjiang – building on other orders restricting such products from entering the US.

The State Department has estimated that since 2017, up to two million Uyghurs and members of other ethnic groups have been imprisoned in a shadowy network of internment camps where they are reportedly "subjected to torture, cruel and inhumane treatment such as physical and sexual abuse, forced labour, and death".

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China has described the facilities as "vocational training centres," and claimed in 2019 such centres had been closed. Officials have consistently denied all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Western governments and human rights organisations have alleged that minorities in the region have been subjected to forced labour through job creation schemes that the Chinese government says are aimed at achieving "poverty alleviation."

Workers who have participated in those job programs have told CNN that if they did not take the jobs they were offered, for a fraction of the usual rate of pay, they were warned they would be sent to camps.

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Former NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro has been temporarily blocked from taking up a taxpayer-funded job in New York after his appointment came under scrutiny from ministers.

The state's upper house passed a motion on Wednesday to halt the appointment while an inquiry is undertaken into how Barliaro became the NSW Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner just six months after quitting politics.

Barilaro created the job, which has a $500,000 salary, when he was trade minister.

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Labor MP Penny Sharpe called for the inquiry due to the controversial nature of the appointment.

"This is one of the murkiest appointments we have seen from this 12-year-old government," Sharpe said.

"If John Barilaro is genuinely the best person for the job let's see the process he went through and how he was endorsed."

However, 9News understands Barilaro has already signed his employment contract and the former deputy premier can take the job even with an inquiry underway.

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The controversy has stemmed from revelations that the role had already been appointed to another public servant before being readvertised and handed to Barilaro.

Executive Jenny West was told in August by former premier Gladys Berejiklian that she was the successful applicant for the role, however, a month later she was told it was no longer hers.

Instead, the position was kept vacant and awarded to Barilaro on Friday without cabinet approval, which has sparked outrage among politicians.

"She was then told 'Sorry, you don't have the job', she also subsequently didn't have a position in the public service and paid out," Sharpe said.

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The premier and deputy premier have defended the decision to appoint Barilaro to the role.

"These were public service decisions through an independent process," Dominic Perrottet said.

"Irrespective of whose name is there at the end it's about having the best person there and I think that's what has happened here," Paule Toole said.