Yes, I think that's fair. It's a tough concept to get your head around. The same person you voted for—who was on the campaign hustings, who is part of government, who is a political player in a very significant sense—needs at the same time, wearing a different hat, to be an impartial person exercising statutory authorities for the public interest.
There can't be a partisan reason, for example, to approve a particular licence or engage in a particular prosecution or make a decision on the allocation of those resources. This is where ministers really wear two hats and are intended to wear two hats in our system: that they be drawn from the ranks of the elected politicians or senators, but also, when performing those functions, need to be free of conflicts and, I would argue, need to be seen to be free of any conflict of a private nature.
So I think that's right; they're different accountabilities. The prime ministerial one is ultimately about keeping your job. The other one is about a reporting obligation: to say, if there's been a breach, that there has been a breach.
But really, the consequences of that are going to be political for most of these individuals, so these accountabilities are not unrelated, even though they're of different kinds.