"Tokyo - Japan's Agriculture Ministry reprimanded six bureaucrats after an internal probe found they spent work hours contributing to Wikipedia on topics unrelated to farm issues — including 260 entries about cartoon robots."

I wonder what we would find if we did a similar check here in Australia?

Considering that we have local, state, territory, and Commonwealth government employees whose combined numbers are probably staggering the total number of person hours that might be devoted to diligent work that has nothing to do with what they are paid for could constitute an interesting statistic.

If it is then possible it would be even more interesting to obtain similar statistics for employees in private companies.

From the statistics obtained it should be possible to provide some answers to the following questions (at least):

1. If Australian workers currently work extensive hours over and above what they are paid for - could we reduce the time they spend away from their families by stopping them from using their company's facilities and time for their own enjoyment?
2. If Australian workers spend time 'working' at things that have nothing to do with their jobs, using their company's facilities and time - to what extent could the costs of the products for which they are responsible be reduced by stopping them from 'working' in this way?

I would like to see the Communications Minister in Australia get to work on this preferably BEFORE the elections here - then we might see whether we can get some cost reductions across the board in our cost of living regardless of which political party finally manages to win power for the next few years.