Ben Thomas is a public relations consultant and political commentator who has worked for the National Party. He is a regular contributor to Stuff.

OPINION: If Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has learned anything dealing with the ministerial malfunctions left for him by his predecessor Jacinda Ardern, it’s that there’s always more beneath the surface.

So in dealing with somewhat vague claims about Justice Minister Kiri Allan’s manner with public servants, he is keeping an eye out for the possibility of more salacious details to come.

He will also be thinking about whether the allegations could be a symptom of a bigger malaise. Scuttlebutt about politicians is as common as the wind in Wellington. But public servants making anonymous allegations in media about the conduct of ministers is highly unusual.

An anonymous official quoted by Stuff, that the problem was Allan’s “low trust and respect of public servants” and that this had been discussed among senior staff.

The slowly deteriorating relationship between the elected government and the neutral public service is something that has simmered beneath the surface of Wellington over the past five years, and could prove challenging to turn around.

This is not to say public servants always love their political masters. There is a Yes Minister-type cliché (dating back to the days of cradle to grave employment) that some in the public service see ministers and even governments as temporary occupants of the Beehive who are to be waited out, rather than served.

This kind of outlook, however cartoonish, can make it easier to endure badly behaved or incompetent ministers for a time.

Officials rarely if ever feel entitled to expedite the transition by leaking or exposing ministers. Not simply because of the professional risk, but because it would be counterproductive, and corrosive to the enduring relationship of trust between the public service and whichever ministers next take the reins.

But some ministers sound increasingly estranged from their departments when discussing operational failures, as if they are talking about something they’ve seen on the news.

Officials grumble about the lack of direction from a government that started behind the eight-ball in 2017, with a lack of experienced ministers to establish and instruct their colleagues on how to work with the bureaucracy.

The mistrust goes both ways. While there are huge variations in the performance of individual agencies and ministers, a broad diagnosis of the problem is that ministers can’t tell the public service what they need, and are then upset when they don’t get it.

One of the more fleshed out allegations about Allan could serve as an example.

Someone in the public service took exception to how the minister acted in a meeting with staff from Kānoa, the economic development fund that succeeded the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), and which Allan inherited from a succession of her colleagues when she became Regional Development Minister in February.

Should our opinion of Allan’s alleged conduct be affected if we note that a review by the Office of the Auditor-General of Kānoa this year found significant procedural failures by the agency, sufficient that it was “not yet certain that Parliament or the public can have confidence that the investments made through the PGF reset will ultimately represent good value for money”.

One of the key criticisms of the public spending watchdog was that the fund had a “complex” framework for assessing potential investments, with three tiers, eight objectives and five principles, which it said were “broad” and “difficult to apply”.

Unsurprisingly, it seems Kānoa didn’t really try that hard, applying criteria inconsistently and not scrutinising the claimed benefits of investments.

Kānoa, developed initially as part of a coalition agreement with New Zealand First and then retooled for the post-Covid recovery, stands in as a microcosm of a government which abandoned concrete targets for public service performance.

Numerical goals for childhood immunisation rates or reducing rheumatic fever were replaced with a nebulous “wellbeing” framework and aspirations.

If everything is a priority, nothing is really a priority, and officials are left to pick and choose what to pursue in a fragmented way. Officials are conservative and risk averse, and can’t be expected to fill the vacuum of ministerial leadership with their own inspired vision.

Directing the public service to reach concrete measures works: one of the few solid targets this government set was reducing the prison population by 25%, and it is no coincidence it is one of the big election promises it has delivered on.

What will worry Hipkins, and also a future National-ACT government, is that having lacked parameters, the public service leadership may come to ultimately lose the initiative and capacity to deliver on ministerial intentions, and there will be a further erosion of the trust and confidence necessary for good government.

The prime minister could lead by example. He could take up Opposition leader Christopher Luxon’s practice of setting KPIs for his team, and conduct more regular reviews than the annual letters of expectations for ministers.

He may find that, as with children, with appropriate boundaries Labour ministers start to flourish.