But don’t forget: Corruption is not just a party political issue.
When an agency head engineers a restructure or review which magically results in the creation of a senior position for a mate, that’s corruption. When a senior official intervenes in a selection process to make sure his or her favoured candidate gets the promotion, that’s corruption. When purportedly open recruitment and procurement processes are run simply to legitimise a foregone conclusion, that’s corruption.
I anticipate that if a federal ICAC with real teeth is established and given jurisdiction to investigate circumstances which arose before its creation, many of the complaints will come from inside government agencies. Plenty of people with long memories know what goes on inside government agencies, but don’t trust the public interest disclosure legislation which has been described by a Federal Court judge as "technical, obtuse and intractable".
The judgment in which that statement was made arose from documents mailed by a security guard to a federal MP containing a range of allegations against high-ranking staff at the Department of Parliamentary Services, including its handling of investigations and review processes. The guard told the court there were also allegations relating to answers given in Senate estimates proceedings about a security incident. He also alleged a senior DPS officer had sought to cover up and avoid formal processes over a threat of physical violence made by a supervisor against a subordinate. He alleged multiple breaches of the parliamentary services code of conduct "including deception by providing and attempting to provide false, misleading and deliberately incomplete evidence to Senate estimates hearings and answers to questions on notice".
Plenty of very senior federal officials and retired federal officials will be sweating if a real federal ICAC is set up.
(You are correct, le P: a federal ICAC would not have jurisdiction to investigate ‘purely state’ matters.)