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NSW police and the NRL's integrity unit are investigating an incident where incoming St George Illawarra forward George Burgess is alleged to have thrown another motorist's phone onto the road after a verbal altercation.

The English prop was involved in the roadside incident in Wollongong on the NSW south coast on Monday evening.

A police statement said a 32-year-old man's mobile phone was damaged when Burgess, 29, allegedly grabbed it from him and threw it on the road following a verbal altercation.

The incident was reported to police with the Dragons then alerting the NRL's integrity unit.

"St George Illawarra are aware of an alleged road incident involving 2022 recruit George Burgess," a Dragons statement read on Wednesday.

"The NRL integrity unit have been informed.

"As the police are currently investigating the matter, the Dragons will be making no further comment at this stage."

After eight seasons and a starring role in their 2014 grand final win, Burgess left South Sydney in 2019 to join Wigan.

But he played just eight games in the Super League in 2020 before departing the club on medical grounds, with two years left on his contract.

The 15-time English international underwent hip surgery before securing his move back to Australia with the Dragons, with whom the 29-year-old signed a two-year deal earlier this month.

"George will make a significant contribution to us here at the Dragons on and off the field; his experience and career achievements will only have a positive influence on the development of the younger players currently within our squad," St George Illawarra general manager of football Ben Haran said at the time.

"While he has some obstacles still to overcome following his well-documented surgery, our medical staff have already commenced working with George on his rehabilitation.

"Everyone is committed to helping George get back to his fighting best ahead of the 2022 season, but no person more than George himself."

© AAP 2021

Charlie Watts, the self-effacing and unshakeable Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock's greatest rhythm sections and used his "day job" to support his enduring love of jazz, has died at age 80.

Watts "passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family", his publicist Bernard Doherty said.

"Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation," Doherty said on Tuesday.

Watts had announced he would not tour with the Stones in 2021 because of a health issue.

The quiet, elegantly dressed Watts was often ranked with the likes of Keith Moon and Ginger Baker as a premier rock drummer, respected for his muscular, swinging style. He joined the Stones in early 1963 and remained for nearly 60 years, ranking just behind Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as the group's longest-lasting and most essential member.

Watts largely held himself apart through the drug abuse, creative clashes and ego wars that helped kill founding member Brian Jones, drove bassist Bill Wyman and Jones' replacement Mick Taylor to quit and otherwise made being in the Stones a most exhausting job.

A classic Stones song such as Brown Sugar and Start Me Up often began with a hard guitar riff from Richards, with Watts following closely behind, and Wyman, as the bassist liked to say, "fattening the sound". The documentary Shine a Light showcased Watts' speed, power and timekeeping when director Martin Scorsese filmed Jumpin' Jack Flash from where he drummed towards the back of the stage.

The Stones began, Watts said, "as white blokes from England playing black American music" but quickly evolved their own sound. Watts was a jazz drummer and never lost his affinity for the music he first loved, heading his own jazz band and taking on numerous other side projects.

He had his eccentricities - Watts collected cars even though he didn't drive - but he was a steadying influence as the Stones defied all expectations by rocking well into their 70s, decades longer than their old rivals The Beatles.

He was a rock star, but Watts said the actual experience was draining, unpleasant and even frightening. "Girls chasing you down the street, screaming ... horrible! ... I hated it," he told The Guardian. In another interview, he described the drumming life as a "cross between being an athlete and a total nervous wreck".

Watts found refuge by marrying Shirley Ann Shepherd in 1964 and having a daughter, Seraphina. While other rock marriages crumbled, theirs held. Jagger and Richards could only envy their bandmate's indifference to stardom and relative contentment in his private life, which included tending horses on an estate in Devon, England.

Charles Robert Watts, son of a truck driver and a homemaker, was born in Neasden, London, on June 2, 1941. From childhood, he was passionate about music - jazz in particular. He fell in love with the drums after hearing Chico Hamilton, and taught himself to play by listening to records by giants such as Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington.

He worked for an advertising firm after attending London's Harrow Art College and played drums in his spare time. London was home to a blues and jazz revival in the early 1960s, with Jagger, Richards and Eric Clapton among the future superstars getting their start. Watts' career took off after he played with Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, for whom Jagger also performed, and was encouraged by Korner to join the Stones.

Watts wasn't a rock music fan and Richards and Jones immersed him in blues and rock records, notably the music of bluesman Jimmy Reed. Watts said the band could trace its roots to when he had lost his job and briefly shared an apartment with Jagger and Richards because he could live there rent-free.

Watts was the final man to join the Stones; the band had searched for months to find a permanent drummer and feared Watts was too accomplished for them. Watts said he believed at first the band would be lucky to last a year.

Watts he fell into heroin addiction in the mid-1980s. He would credit his stable relationship with his wife for getting him off drugs. "I was warring with myself at that time," he told Rolling Stone magazine.

Watts indulged his passion for jazz by putting together some of the most talented musicians in Britain for recordings and performances. His first jazz record was the 1986 Live at Fulham Town Hall.

Watts was treated for throat cancer in 2004 and made a full recovery, resuming touring with the Stones and his jazz band.

He is survived by his wife Shirley, sister Linda, daughter Seraphina and granddaughter Charlotte.

© PAA 2021

Scott Morrison has warned the most dangerous part of Australia's rescue mission in Afghanistan lies ahead after another 650 people were evacuated.

The five latest flights take the total of people airlifted from Kabul as part of Australia's efforts to almost 1700 since the operation began last week.

The prime minister told coalition colleagues on Tuesday the evacuation mission was being conducted in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

"The hardest and most difficult and dangerous part is ahead of us still - getting out the remaining people and making sure we can evacuate our own people safely," Mr Morrison said.

"Those Australians on the ground are saving lives. Lives that would otherwise be shattered and destroyed if we weren't able to operate those operations so successfully to date."

He said Australia would continue evacuation flights if the United States decided to extend the withdrawal deadline past August 31.

"I've made no assumptions about the Taliban - we know their form," Mr Morrison told the Nine Network.

"We've been going like we won't be able to get another flight in the next day, so we've been trying to make every flight as successful as possible."

The prime minister said the mission would continue for as long as it could.

"If that deadline is able to be pushed out, we've made that clear to the United States that we would support that," Mr Morrison said.

"But in the meantime, we'll just keep getting on with the job."

Labor's foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said there were dreadful consequences for people left behind under the Taliban.

"The hard reality is the government acted too late," she told a caucus meeting.

"Helping those who help us is both an ethical responsibility and a national security priority."

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said it was not a perfect situation but he would rather be an Australian trying to leave Kabul than from many other countries.

"We will hear about the person left behind. We'll hear about the atrocious actions of terrorism. We will hear about the person who was killed," he told partyroom colleagues.

Britain plans to use an emergency G7 summit to lobby US President Joe Biden to extend the presence of American troops beyond the August 31 deadline.

A second repatriation flight of evacuees arrived in Melbourne from the United Arab Emirates on Monday, taking the total brought to Australia to 271.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who spent more than two decades in the military, continues to push for Australia to join other democracies in requiring parliament to approve declarations of war.

"History shows decisions to go to war are not something any government, nor prime minister, can be trusted with," he said.

The prime minister said the government supported retaining the status quo around executive powers set out in the constitution.

Mr Wilkie said the Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments owned the Afghanistan tragedy.

© AAP 2021