Most of the time the structure of government, universities and the corparate world in australia is modelled on a top down approach - this works when generals have to coordinate armies - were information is channeled to the generals. Generally those in high positions manage by exception. Namely "everyone follow my plan do their bit and report back to me if there are exceptions".

Japans coparate world is more bottom up than most think and is one reason for their success. They know that the people doing their job know how to improve it more than others, companies that requested suggestions and showed that more than 1 in 2 suggestions are implimented made the culture in those businesses change - soon the suggestions for improvements became floods. Ideas were always there - actions however not - if its governed by a belief that none care how flawed a process is until its "cut back time" or publically catastrophically flawed.

My initial expectation of my government is to actively make citizens happier. My initial expectation of my universities was to make me more cultured and knowledable My initial expectation of my corparate is that we are a team striving for one goal. When this isnt true its easy for individuals to fall into apathy when generally they are siphoned and fed though a machine of policy and processes.

Technically government is from the bottom up from a voting point of view, but once established its stucture is generally top down. Usually the "idea" and the "person behind it" are not separated. That is why character destruction is so successful in discrediting peoples motions. For government I feel we need to disassocate the "idea champion" with the idea itself. Now we have "Vote for such and such that has these beleifs (that with ministries and our system become policies or law"

Imagine this: Separately voting for people to facilitate the policies we individually vote on and present ourselves all policies on a subject are shown as "candiate policy models" and link to other policies that can it supports / jeapodieses or is dependant on ( deducing this is what government does). anyone - can vote of them and of course isnt mandatory this is more a true ideal of citizens determinng everything.

Also if online it could be set up such that individuals can cast automatic votes. I log into my "goverment policiy site" and select : "vote for all policies that allow abortions to be the mothers choice" It is very frustrating electing someone because of certain policies they championed then see them act as authorities on a a host of unrelated subjects.

Refurrendums are are expensive clumsy and spun so much before the question is even anwered by the public generally the results reflect the charisma of which side had the best political propaganda than anything else. Mini efficent paperless online "refurrendums" for smaller issues as well as ethical ones would make everyone interested in politics. ... and its governments role to impliment the models that are voted for. Yes it does have its fear-flaw "what if a hacker" - but safeguards can be in place where the scope of their actions can be as or more ensured than flaws in paper voting.

The infrustruture for this is avalable ( online voting ). Its security can be closely and independantly monitored and it would be a bottom up approach for anything that ANYONE had a good idea about.... this also separates government "filtering" what we is being focused on or managed at any time. Government currently is a bottle neck for change as much as it is an avenue for it. Effectively we could have a highly distributed government - its people for more things all the time. Low cost / more accutely reflective of the citizens views.

Criticism some time ago resulted in the treasurer of the day, Mr Costello, saying it was up to the shareholders to vote against the excessive rewards to public company board members.

The average shareholder does not have the power to do this. He or she is outnumbered by the number of shares being voted by the fund managers.

It should be made necessary (possible in this electronic day and age) for the fund managers to approach the people whose funds they are managing to obtain thier direction as to how to vote their shares.

I would like to suggest the introduction of four year fixed terms for the Australian Federal Parliament. This would eliminate the will he go/wont he go situations that seems to happen whenever election time comes near. In other words, the incumbent Government often manipulates the election timing to suit the own purposes. This should not be allowed. Although it should not be taken in a truly literal sense, short term-ism has been mentioned many times before and during the summit, four year fixed terms would accommodate and encourage longer term thinking and planning by the Government. Many great democracies (and Australian states) have fixed parliamentary terms and I believe the stability and functionality of the Federal Parliament would be greatly enhanced with the introduction of four year fixed terms.