In the depths of a bruising week in politics, NSW Premier Mike Baird received a rare welfare check from his teenage daughter.
"Hi Dad, how are you? Hang in there," the midweek text message read.
Mr Baird had just performed a spectacular backflip on his greyhound racing ban and was retreating from his long-held reluctance around shark nets.
It was "the clearest signal ever" things were tough, Mr Baird told an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce lunch on Friday.
"I said to my wife, 'are things really that bad?'," Mr Baird, a father of three, said in jest to the gathering.
"Anyway, we march on."
Looking ahead from the battering week, Mr Baird then launched into a speech spruiking his state's credentials as a hub for disruptive technologies to flourish.
Throwing sledges at Melbourne and Brisbane, he said NSW was the fastest-growing economy in the country with annual transport spending outstripping New York and London.
Fresh from snipping the ribbon at new Sydney offices of ride-sharing behemoth Uber, at an ex-banking building where he once worked, Mr Baird said the energy and excitement was palpable.
"What used to be the head of credits office is now a yoga room. How the world has changed," he said.
"You are seeing this disruption, you are seeing opportunity, you are seeing jobs. We want NSW to be right in the centre."
Mr Baird said NSW was perfectly placed to capitalise on the booming sharing and digital economies, with some 14,000 people already drawing an income from Uber across the state.
"We are a state that has become more competitive in a global context. We've grown faster, there's more jobs, people are taking the appropriate risks," he said.
"We're building the infrastructure, we have the most attractive city in the world."
