Is it at all possible to find out if a page is being newly published or only updated?

For example: if the page is newly published I have to update the sidemenu for parent and sibblings, so that means rewriting the cache for a lot of pages, whereas on a simple update only the page itself needs to be re-cached. I'd love to use this info in my pagesAffectedByChanges() function.

[EDIT] Or would it be difficult to create a batch action just to publish static pages? Because now you have to create complex conditions in pagesAffectedByChanges() - or refresh the entire cache. I'd like to have a more resourcefriendly inbetween approach?