Sending Newcastle's Pfizer COVID vaccine doses to Sydney tells Hunter region residents they matter less

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was offended by the question when asked at Monday's press conference whether Belmont's vaccine hub had lost doses as a result of its position among seats not held by her government.

It was always unlikely that Ms Berejiklian would say yes to such a cynical line of reasoning, but many in the Hunter can be forgiven for seeking some reason behind the events of recent days.

The suggestion of pork barreling (or its inverse) is indeed an insulting one, as Hunter residents told by text message that their booked Pfizer doses would instead be sent to teenagers sitting the HSC in Sydney understand very well.

What they do not understand is how the Premier's continual message about needing more jabs in more arms squares with a captain's call about exactly which doses in which arms.

Ending Sydney's lockdown is expressly the priority, as one would expect given the economic blow that city's stubbornly high transmission rates delivers.

Equally, though, there seems little sense in having to shut down Newcastle or other areas immediately afterward if the fast-moving Delta strain breaks containment lines into an area left vulnerable in the meantime.

The reality is that we are all exposed, Sydneysider or Novocastrian, if we encounter the virus without vaccination regardless of our postcode.

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While that risk is undoubtedly more present in Sydney, it is far from non-existent in our region as recent exposures in Thornton and Wallsend attest.

Likewise, loopholes around open houses and more have forced real estate agents and others to self-regulate in an admirable effort to protect our region when the government's measures would not.

Yet it is the shifting of goal posts at the expense of those doing precisely what the government espouses - coming forward to getting vaccinated - that so chafes the sense of fairness in regard to the more than 5000 Hunter residents now in limbo.

Blame is useless, but accountability is not. The latter was in short supply from officials in recent days: Ms Berejiklian on Monday laid the responsibility at the feet of health experts, while Hunter New England Health issued its second statement in 24 hours on Sunday to add an apology those caught up in the changes.

More vaccine supply is the obvious solution to having to choose who gets what, yet it appears out of reach for our government to achieve in the immediate term as they play a zero-sum game against the rest of the world's demand.

It is not the first time regional NSW has found itself treated differently to those who reside in the big city electorates, and unlikely to be the last. The why, however, is not the crux of the incandescent fury; the what of this debacle is galling enough on its own.

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