‘They text each other all the time’: Perrottet and Andrews embrace the benefits of a united front

Listening to the New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, speaking on Friday, you'd be forgiven for thinking Victoria was a new member of his cabinet.

Perrottet said the NSW government had "worked alongside" Victoria to deliver thousands of rapid antigen tests before schools resume next week. They were "the only states in the country" that could boast as much, he said.

On the business support package likely to be announced in the coming days Perrottet again referenced Victoria - the NSW treasurer, Matt Kean, was working "very closely" with his southern counterparts "because we're in a very, very similar situation," he said.

The bonhomie is apparently shared. On Thursday the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said the two premiers "work together as close as we can".

For anyone who lived in NSW or Victoria through the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, this developing bromance between leaders from opposite ends of the ideological divide is a jarring shift.

Despite cooperating in March 2020 to pressure the Morrison government on school closures, Andrews and the former NSW premier Gladys Berejilkian, spent much of the nation's Delta outbreak trading barbs, as the politics of border closures, lockdowns and vaccine allocations became an ongoing pandemic theatre.

But a much closer working relationship has formed between Andrews and Perrottet during the latest wave of the pandemic.