It "could", but that's not available in all circumstances -- many
servers do not have servers other than 127.0.0.1 in resolv.conf
The init scripts are meant to run on essentially all hosts, not just
ones that have a DNS server they can access on a nearby machine. At
one
time, before ntp.conf was allowed to mention host names instead of IP
addresses, none of this was a concern, but in the modern age you need
name service before you set the time.
In any case this fix causes no harm and fixes an annoying problem that
has been in the config scripts for a couple of years.