Barnaby Joyce and George Brandis have both shown a willingness to go their own way, and in so doing to poison key relationships with senior public servants, that suggests they do not understand the respective roles of a minister and the upper ranks of the public service or the Westminster system.
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Mr Brandis' apparent inability to hear, let alone listen to or accept, professionally-grounded and independent advice from the former Solicitor General has just cost the Commonwealth the services of a highly-respected public servant.
Mr Joyce, either by accident or design, prompted the resignation of the former secretary of his department under circumstances that were not dissimilar.
He has also pressed on, against all advice and for obvious personal electoral advantage, with an unpopular plan to relocate a key government agency to his own electorate.
Both have acted in ways that raise questions about whether they have the maturity, commonsense and a willingness to take on board the ideas of others most would consider essential for a senior government minister.
The upper echelons of the public service, both here and in the UK, have a long and distinguished tradition of acting as a brake on the impetuous haste of short-term politicians who sometimes believe scraping across the line with a handful of votes grants them the powers of omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence usually associated with the deity.
While this function was lampooned mercilessly in the hugely popular Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister television series, Sir Humphrey Appleby and his peers were essentially stabilising forces who generally counselled restraint and moderation.
There appears to be little point in recruiting, training and promoting an able cadre of professional administrators and subject experts if their expertise and advice is to be jettisoned by the individual players within the government of the day at the first whiff of a political opportunity.
Neither the Attorney-General's Department nor the Department of Agriculture are private fiefdoms. Both existed long before the arrival of messrs Brandis and Joyce. Both will survive long after the two ministerial incumbents have wandered off to whatever political Valhalla awaits partisan warriors once their vital forces are spent.
While Mr Joyce has made a career out of being outrageous to the point of almost being entertaining, witness his exploits against Pistol and Boo and their celebrity owners, some of the alleged actions now being aired go well beyond that.
The events surrounding Paul Grimes' dismissal after he expressed strong doubts about the former senator's ability to deal with questions of integrity appear to warrant further explanation than "I don't sack department secretaries, that's done by the Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet".
Mr Turnbull would be well advised to have his ministers tutored on the limits of their personal authority if he wants to avoid further political setbacks of this nature.
It is government 101 after all.
