What Wunwing said is correct. The public servants and minders do the advising and no Minister except an idiot will do things without advice to do the thing. I have sat as the public servant preparing for an industry - govt meeting and wunwing is correct. I asked industry what they were going to tell the Minister, discussed the pros and cons with them and pretty much told them what they could get. That way I could frame my advice to the Minister after the meeting in a way that provided mutual support for the industrycase, but of course I was on the side of industry anyway.
If you have an uncooperative public servant there is no point complaining. They close ranks and you will get nowhere, you then have to go for the "nuclear option" - the only way to galvanise a Minister is fear and that can only come from a threat to his seat and/or a Government majority. That fear trumps anything the public service can muster. You can complain till you are blue in the face about rules and regulations and it makes no difference (in fact it makes it worse).
The only way to do that is an aviation campaign group running negative (ie spoiling, smear and mud) advertising campaigns in marginal seats. The masters of this are the Israel lobby and the NRA in the US Congress. The message is simple "support us or you wont be elected" and they can and do make that stick. As I have said before, a negative campaign targeting individual marginal seats is what is needed, even to the extent of supporting a Greens candidate (ugh!) if that is what is needed to keep a government candidate out of office. Do that once, maybe twice and show you can do it at every election in future and all of a sudden, for no reason
doors willl open and a cooperative public servant will appear.