NSW roadmap changes missing one ingredient: Where was Kerry?

Not inviting your chief health officer to the announcement of major changes to the NSW roadmap is not a good look.

NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Flavio Brancaleone

Well that was a train wreck.

The new Premier had plenty of back up at his first full-blooded press conference - four ministers in attendance - but the questions were all about the one person who wasn’t there: Kerry Chant.

Not inviting your chief health officer to the announcement of major changes to the state’s roadmap out of Covid was not a good look.

But maybe having her there, damning your plan with faint praise, would have been worse.

Either way, it was a misstep by Dominic Perrottet, though perhaps not on a par with former Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s brain-snap announcement last month that she was abandoning daily press conferences.

These were big changes, despite the Premier’s attempt to gloss them as fine-tuning and “sensible amendments.”

Schools back earlier, masks off earlier, more home visitors, bigger weddings and funerals.

All seemingly sound moves, with vaccinations on course to hit targets.

But the health advice seemed to have changed every bit as fast as the state’s leadership team.

And the signs of a rushed job were on display.

All school students will now be returning to face-to-face learning by October 25 “with a range of Covid-safe measures in place”.

Dominic Perrottet speaking at the daily press conference at NSW Vaccination hub at Sydney Olympic Park. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Adam Yip

One of those Covid-safe measures won’t be fully vaccinated teachers, who still have until 8 November to get the second jab.

So where was Dr Chant, who has already had her share of scraps with Mr Perrottet?

Last time we checked – although the day is not over – she was the state’s most important medical officer; not just, as the Premier declared “one of my favourite constituents in Epping.”

It may have been a compliment but it looked like an evasion.

“If it’s a health crisis the chief health officer should be here,” one reporter observed.

“Well, it’s an economic crisis at well”, Mr Perrottet responded.

The intent was to show that in the great battle of Health v Business, the new Premier was getting the state back to work - and in that, he succeeded.

The crisis cabinet was out: the Covid and Economic Recovery Committee was in.

But Dr Chant was the ghost in the room.

The Premier got hammered by the press pack, any honeymoon over before it began.

One journo told him his nickname was “Let it Rip”.

That may have been a recent invention, but it could stick.

After some pushing, Perrottet insisted Chant – or at least, “Health” - had supported the new plan.

It was a baptism of fire and the new Premier looked happy when it was all over.

Luckily, thanks to his predecessor, he doesn’t have to do it every day.