My idea is to split the Federal House of Representatives into two sub-houses. One is the "money" house, the other the "moral" house.*

The money house is responsible for taxation, federal budget spending (welfare, health, military, federal public infrastructure, etc.), IR, corporations, banking, trade, etc.

The moral house is responsible for citizenship, marriage, human rights, property rights, general federal crimes (eg: treason), general international treaties and relations (it could override money house trade agreements on human rights grounds), etc.

A voter votes for a candidate for each sub-house at election time. Implementing this gives the voter more power and control by way of increased choice. It also allows for specialisation of politicians due to the new division of labour.

A moral house law overrides a money-house law for issues where the two houses share powers/powers overlap and they produce conflicting laws. Though the money house should be allowed to embrace and extend the spirit of the moral house law when creating law relevant to its responsibilities in areas of shared power. Eg: If the moral house created a general law about non-discrimination in society, then the money house could extend the law (within the spirit of the law of the moral house) with regards to corporation work places.

The judicial system resolves questions of conflict of shared powers.

We could introduce a similar split into the lower state houses also: eg, at the state level- the moral house could pass legislation controlling which sort of medical procedures maybe performed (eg: euthanasia) while the money house would build and maintain the public hospitals.

To prevent budget stifling (budget stifling = the situation where a moral house legalises/illegalises something but the money house refuses to pay for it/pay for the policing of it- such as euthanasia being made legal in a state but the state money house refuses funding to any public hospital that preforms the procedure) a moral house should have direct control of a very small amount of government spending, eg: maybe 0.5% of total government spending.

In conclusion I would like to point out that the other branches of government are already specialised. The judicial branch at both the federal and state level is split into different courts each with their distinct area of responsibility and the executive at both levels is split into many different departments. I believe that if we likewise allow for specialisation by splitting the legislative branch it would positively advance government in Australia.

* The names ‘moral house' and ‘money house' are just token names to help demonstrate my idea.

Mr Fritz has raised an important issue. Centuries have passed since division of labour and specialisation began to revolutionise productivity in the economic sector, supply chain improvements, just-in-time processing, straight-through processing, Web-based customer and b2b interaction have all combined to effectively create a revolution in the way we operate in the commercial sector.

Web-based interactions are leading to a dramatic shift in the way we interrelate on a social level, just ask any 15 year old how long they spend on facebook, instant messenger or the mobile phone, as opposed to how long they spend actually in each other's presence.

What we need to do is look for ways to apply these same principals to make government and government policy development more accesible and responsive to people from all walks of life. Innovation isn't only about invention, it's also about process improvement. Let's seize the technologies we have and use them to create a more responsive democratic system.

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.