Received

Dominic Perrottet has been sworn in as the 46th premier of NSW, vowing to make no major policy or personnel changes in the coming months as the state emerges from COVID-19 lockdown.

The 39-year-old, from the Liberal Party's conservative faction, defeated Rob Stokes 39-5 in Tuesday's leadership ballot at Parliament House.

Stuart Ayres is the new deputy leader and Matt Kean will be treasurer.

Mr Perrottet - a father of six - vowed on Tuesday to be a "family premier" and prioritise the plight of working families in NSW.

He also pledged to maintain policy and cabinet continuity after Gladys Berejiklian's resignation, with no reshuffle in the short term and no major policy changes as lockdowns draw to an end.

He said he would maintain this position at least until summer.

However, the premier indicated he was keen to get children back to school - currently scheduled for October 18 - as soon as possible.

He will also need to appoint a new environment minister to replace Mr Kean and a transport minister to replace Andrew Constance, who announced his resignation at the weekend.

"We are at an important juncture. On Monday, the state opens up and we want to get people back into work, get business open again, and that is the focus of our government," Mr Perrottet said.

"This is not a time for people to be focusing on themselves."

Mr Perrottet knocked back speculation he would bring forward the easing of restrictions in NSW from next Monday to this week, saying he would be briefed by NSW Health later on Tuesday.

NSW is likely to reach its initial COVID-19 vaccination target - 70 per cent double-dose coverage of those 16 and over - by Thursday.

The 80 per cent double-dose milestone is expected about two weeks later and December will usher in a broader "COVID-normal" era when unvaccinated and vaccinated people will enjoy similar freedoms.

Opposition Leader Chris Minns on Tuesday said any change to NSW's roadmap out of lockdown should be backed by health advice.

While Labor has sought to demonstrate bipartisanship over health policy amid lockdown, Mr Minns said the opposition would strongly oppose any attempts to privatise more assets.

"My real fear is that this rigid, doctrinaire approach to economics will be carried on into the NSW rebuild," Mr Minns told reporters.

"I don't think we need five years like the past five years."

Long touted as the premier-in-waiting, Mr Perrottet struck a deal at the weekend with his moderate colleagues to make Mr Ayres deputy.

Ms Berejiklian resigned on Friday after the state's corruption watchdog disclosed she was being investigated for potential breaches of public trust during her secret five-year relationship with former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire. She did not attend Tuesday's vote.

Mr Perrottet acknowledged the ICAC investigation connected to Ms Berejiklian - due to start on October 18 - would prompt public commentary but insisted it would not distract his government.

A post-lockdown economic recovery plan will be announced shortly.

"Where we had success last year, we'll double down," Mr Perrottet said.

Mr Stokes, 47, had offered himself as an experienced alternative to Mr Perrottet but admitted the party had chosen "emphatically". The Pittwater MP will remain in the planning portfolio.

Mr Perrottet also said he was happy to work with whoever was voted the new National Party leader and deputy premier on Wednesday following John Barilaro's resignation on Monday.

Paul Toole and Melinda Pavey have put their hands up for the top job.

Mr Perrottet acknowledged being a father of six was "demanding" but said he felt enriched by his family responsibilities.

"What I might lose in time, I gain in perspective," he said.

© AAP 2021

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk won't "necessarily" open the state borders once 80 per cent of eligible people are vaccinated, saying hospitals need to be ready for a surge in COVID-19 cases.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has accused the state of trying to "extort" or hold the Commonwealth to "ransom" by refusing to open the borders unless it was given more federal funding for hospitals.

Ms Palaszczuk denied this, noting every other state and territory health minister had last week jointly signed a letter raising funding issues with the federal government.

"We want to make sure that, you know, that our hospitals are getting ready," she told reporters on Tuesday.

"You only have to see what's happening in NSW and Victoria ... the huge pressure that the staff are going to be under, and they're constantly under this pressure.

"When we do have a large outbreak of Delta in this state there's going to be added pressure, and that's not just happening in Australia, it's happening across the globe. These are unprecedented times."

Queensland's hospitals are already facing huge capacity pressures with The Australian reporting on Tuesday there were 31 'code yellows' - when hospitals start to run out of beds and ambulances are forced to divert to other emergency departments - in September.

The premier said reopening the state borders wasn't tied to federal health funding and would not be automatic once 80 per cent of eligible Queenslanders were fully vaccinated.

"Not necessarily, it depends on the situation of the day, it depends on what's happening in NSW and Victoria, so we are watching all of those issues very closely," Ms Palaszczuk said.

Mr Morrison said there was already enough federal funding for Queensland hospitals and that the premier was trying to use state border closures to "extort" more cash.

"She has to take that up with the Queensland people then," he told Nine Network on Tuesday.

"To go down this point and say: 'Well, you know, I'm going to hold the federal government to ransom and seek to extort from them money on the basis of COVID' - I just don't think is the right way to go."

The Commonwealth had contributed to half the cost of propping up state and territory health systems against COVID-19, Mr Morrison said, a commitment which totalled about $30 billion nationwide.

"Of course there are challenges, but as a state government they've got to be responsible for their state health system," Mr Morrison said.

"NSW is getting on with it, so are Victoria and the ACT, so Queensland needs to get on with it."

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath stressed the request for fresh talks on federal funding for state hospitals was a joint proposal from all states territories, not just Queensland.

It was incorrect for the prime minister to categorise the health funding debate as a Queensland issue.

"This is a national conversation, it's not a fight between the Commonwealth and Queensland," Ms D'Ath said.

"It is every single state and territory, saying that our health system was under extensive pressure and demand prior to COVID that required a rethink In the funding model going forward."

© AAP 2021

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are at least partially reconnected to the global internet, nearly six hours into an outage that paralysed the social media platform.

Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram apps went dark at about midday on Monday US Eastern time, in what website monitoring group Downdetector said was the largest such failure it had ever seen.

A few hours later, some users began to regain partial access to the three apps.

The outage was the second blow to the social media giant in as many days after a whistleblower on Sunday accused the company of repeatedly prioritising profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation.

"To every small and large business, family, and individual who depends on us, I'm sorry," Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer tweeted, adding that it "may take some time to get to 100 per cent".

Shares of Facebook, which has nearly two billion daily active users, fell 4.9 per cent on Monday, their biggest daily drop since last November, amid a broader selloff in technology stocks. Shares rose about half a per cent in after-hours trade following resumption of service.

Security experts said the disruption could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.

"Facebook basically locked its keys in its car," tweeted Jonathan Zittrain, director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Soon after the outage started, Facebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem or say how many users were affected by the outage.

The error message on Facebook's webpage suggested an error in the Domain Name System (DNS), which allows web addresses to take users to their destinations. A similar outage at cloud company Akamai Technologies Inc took down multiple websites in July.

In Australia, outages began being reported by users of Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp from about 3am AEDT local time on Tuesday.

Thousands of users reported issues accessing Facebook websites and aaps, according to Downdetector's Australian site.

Several Facebook employees who declined to be named said that they believed that the outage was caused by an internal routing mistake to an internet domain that was compounded by the failures of internal communication tools and other resources that depend on that same domain in order to work.

Facebook, which is the second largest digital advertising platform in the world, was losing about $US545,000 ($A747,880) in US ad revenue per hour during the outage, according to estimates from ad measurement firm Standard Media Index.

On Sunday, Frances Haugen, who worked as a product manager on the civic misinformation team at Facebook, revealed that she was the whistleblower who provided documents underpinning a Wall Street Journal investigation and a Senate hearing on Instagram's harm to teen girls.

Haugen was due to urge the US Congress on Tuesday to regulate the company.

© AP 2021