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A drunk and drugged driver who killed four children walking along a Sydney footpath to buy ice-creams has had his jail term slashed.

Samuel William Davidson was driving erratically and speeding when he struck Veronique Sakr, 11, and her cousins, Sienna Abdallah, eight, and her siblings Angelina, 12, and Antony, 13.

The 29-year-old ploughed into them after his ute mounted a kerb at Oatlands, in Sydney's northwest on February 1, 2020.

He was jailed in April 2021 for 28 years with a non-parole period of 21 years.

But on Friday in a majority decision, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal concluded the term was manifestly excessive.

Davidson was resentenced to a term of 20 years with a non-parole period of 15 years.

The professional truck driver pleaded guilty to four counts of manslaughter and to charges related to the injuries caused to three other children.

One boy has suffered permanent brain damage.

The sentencing judge said Davidson's menacing, dangerous and aggressive driving showed all responsibility to the road safety of others was abandoned.

The tragedy was inevitable, but the magnitude of the tragedy extended to the unimaginable, he said.

Justice Christine Adamson dissented from the conclusion of Justices Paul Brereton and Natalie Adams who found the "aggregate" term - which is imposed instead of separate terms for each offence - was manifestly excessive.

"The sentencing judge was faced with a difficult task in sentencing the applicant for the highest number of manslaughter charges arising from the one act of criminal negligence in NSW to date," Justice Adams said.

While there were no other aggregate sentences for four deaths for the appeal court to consider, she said there were cases where the criminally negligent driving was comparable even though it resulted in fewer deaths.

After considering these cases, relevant sentencing principles and other data, she was satisfied the aggregate sentence imposed was "unreasonable or plainly unjust".

"The real question raised by this appeal is how the fact of the multiple deaths is to be punished in circumstances where the same act in driving caused four deaths," she said.

"His one act of criminally negligent driving had catastrophic consequences."

In resentencing, she said Davidson was a man of prior good character, had genuine remorse, little risk of re-offending and had suffered the long-term impact of ADHD

"As the sentencing judge noted, the purposes of specific deterrence, protection of the community and rehabilitation are of less significance in this matter."

Danny Abdullah, father of three of the children who were killed, wrote a letter saying no sentence imposed would ever be enough for the loss the families have suffered.

"But this Court is required to reconcile their grief with the application of the relevant sentencing principles and, by way of instinctive synthesis, arrive at the appropriate aggregate sentence to punish the applicant," the judge said.

The dissenting judge, Justice Adamson, said the District Court judge's carefully expressed and well-reasoned judgment explained how and why the aggregate sentence was imposed.

"There is no error in either the process or the result," she said.

The sentence imposed was lengthy because the crimes were so objectively serious, while there were limited subjective factors in his favour.

"I am not persuaded that this Court ought intervene on the basis that the sentence might be regarded by the applicant as crushing."

Mr Abdallah and his wife Leila Abdallah have previously said they had forgiven the driver.

© AAP 2022

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Health Minister Mark Butler says the government is monitoring the rise of COVID-19 cases across the country closely, ahead of a snap national cabinet meeting next week.

State and territory leaders will meet with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday, as the government defends its decision to end the pandemic leave payments for workers needing to isolate due to catching the virus.

The $750 payments finished at the end of June, which Mr Butler said was necessary as the country moved into a new phase of managing the pandemic.

He defended the end of the payments as case numbers increase from new, more infectious sub-variants.

"This is the time it was intended to come off, this is the time it needs to come off ... we are looking to do everything we can to reduce incidents of severe illness," he told ABC Radio on Friday.

"As you move to a new phase that doesn't have the same level of mandates around people's behaviour ... inevitably you have to start looking at these very large emergency payments that have been coming out of the budget."

Mr Butler said there were a "range of points" where a decision to potentially revisit the idea of a pandemic leave payment would come about.

The health minister said it was a tough decision to end the payments as a third wave of the Omicron variant was spreading.

"There's no end to the list of worthy, important things we could be spending the money on in the health portfolio, but there is an end to the money," he said.

"The Australian community understands, and indeed wants, the country to move to a new phase in confronting this pandemic."

The prime minister said the payments would not return due to budget pressures.

He said many employees would already be receiving payments from their workplace should they be forced to isolate.

"The idea no one is getting sick leave at the moment is not the case," Mr Albanese told reporters on Friday.

"Good employers are recognising people are continuing to work from home while they have COVID and receiving payments through that.

"The (pandemic leave) payments were put in place by the former government with an end date, a decision they made at the time."

While the government has laid the blame on the coalition for the decision to end the payments on June 30, opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston said clarity was needed on why the pandemic leave measures weren't extended during the height of new infections.

"I would like the government to advise Australians of what was the basis why they thought it was a good idea now to remove these particular supports at the same time they're telling Australians we're about to be hit by another very serious wave of the virus," she told ABC Radio.

Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff and NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns have called for an extension to pandemic leave payments.

Federal Labor MP Mike Freelander broke ranks on Thursday, urging the prime minister to extend the support measures.

"Anything we can do to slow the spread of the virus is very important," Dr Freelander told The Australian newspaper.

"I'd like Anthony Albanese, when he gets back from the Pacific Island conference, to reconsider."

More than 47,000 cases and 78 deaths were recorded in Australia on Thursday with 4512 people in hospital.

LATEST 24-HOUR COVID-19 DATA:

Victoria: 10,584 cases, 17 deaths, 749 in hospital with 35 in ICU

NSW: 12,228 cases, 14 deaths, 2027 in hospital with 60 in ICU

Tasmania: 1727 cases, one death, 133 in hospital with six in ICU

© AAP 2022

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The United States and more than 40 other countries have agreed to coordinate investigations into suspected war crimes in Ukraine, shortly after what Ukraine says is a Russian missile strike that killed civilians far from front lines.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the international conference that Russian missiles had struck two community centres in the west of Ukraine, killing 20 people, including three children, and wounding many more.

Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in war crimes and deliberately targeting civilians since it invaded Ukraine in February.

It says it launched a "special military operation" to protect Russian speakers and root out dangerous nationalists.

Ukraine says Russia is waging an unprovoked war of conquest.

On Thursday, 45 countries at the conference in The Hague - headquarters of the International Criminal Court (ICC) - signed a political declaration to work together on investigations into war crimes in Ukraine.

Those countries included European Union members as well as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico and Australia.

Steps they will take include creating an umbrella group to avoid duplicating investigations, training Ukrainian prosecutors and expanding the number of forensic teams operating in Ukraine.

They also pledged 20 million euros ($A30 million) to assist the ICC as well as the prosecutor general's office in Ukraine and United Nations support efforts.

With 23,000 war crimes investigations now open and different countries heading teams, evidence needs to be credible and organised, officials said.

Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said governments were galvanised by images of "innocent civilians being butchered with their hands tied behind their back, women and men being raped and sometimes family members being forced to look at that".

Separately, Hoekstra said the Netherlands would consider setting up an international Ukraine war crimes tribunal, in part because neither Ukraine nor Russia are members of the ICC.

"We have to fill a vacuum and the ICC here doesn't have the jurisdictions so I can imagine we do look into coming up with such a tribunal... We will take a look into this," he said.

Since invading in February, Russian forces have bombed Ukrainian cities to ruins and left behind bodies in the streets of towns and villages they occupied.

Ukraine says tens of thousands of civilians have died.

Russia denies responsibility.

There have also been some reports of Ukrainians mistreating Russian prisoners although the vast majority of accusations documented by bodies such as the UN are of alleged atrocities committed by Russian invaders and their proxies.

"As this meeting takes place, Russian forces continue to commit atrocities in Ukraine with harrowing intensity," said US envoy Uzra Zeya, who attended the meeting.

"With each day the war crimes mount: rape, torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances, forced deportations, attacks on schools, hospitals, playgrounds, apartment buildings, grain silos, water and gas facilities."

The European Union's justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, noted that war crimes and genocide suspects were still at large from conflicts dating back decades in places such as Rwanda, Darfur, Syria, Congo and the Balkans.

ICC chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said there were reasons for hope because more than 40 countries were now seeking action on Ukraine through the court.

The ICC has sent the largest field team in its 20-year history to investigate in Ukraine.

"At a time like this, the law cannot be a spectator. The law cannot recline in comfort in The Hague," he said.

© RAW 2022

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Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey has pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually assaulting three men a decade or more ago, and was told he would face trial next year.

Spacey, 62, stood in the dock and spoke clearly as he replied "not guilty" to each of the five charges during a hearing at London's Central Criminal Court, commonly known as the Old Bailey.

Judge Mark Wall set a date of June 6, 2023, for the trial to start and said it would last three to four weeks. It is likely to be at the Old Bailey, the venue for Britain's highest-profile criminal trials.

The former "House of Cards" star, who ran London's Old Vic theatre between 2004 and 2015, denied four counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.

The incidents allegedly took place in London between March 2005 and August 2008, and one in western England in April 2013. The victims are now in their 30s and 40s.

Space's lawyer previously said the actor "strenuously denies" the allegations.

Spacey, who has addresses in London and the US, was granted bail and allowed to return to the United States after a preliminary hearing last month. The judge continued the actor's unconditional bail on Thursday, and said another pretrial hearing would be held early in 2023.

Spacey thanked the judge at the end of the 15-minute hearing. He made no comment as he left court and was ushered through a crowd of photographers and camera crews into a chauffeur-driven car.

Spacey won a best supporting actor Academy Award for the 1995 film The Usual Suspects and a lead actor Oscar for the 1999 movie American Beauty.

But his celebrated career came to an abrupt halt in 2017 when actor Anthony Rapp accused the star of assaulting him at a party in the 1980s, when Rapp was a teenager. Spacey denies the allegations.

Spacey faces a separate civil sex-assault lawsuit from Rapp in US federal court in New York.

© RAW 2022