Former deputy premier Vickie Chapman to earn $100k a year more from her pension by quitting

Vickie Chapman, who has been slammed for quitting politics a month after being re-elected, will earn vastly more from her lavish pension than if she’d stayed to do her job.

Former Liberal deputy premier Vickie Chapman will get an estimated $300,000 annual pension after she quits politics in late May and sends voters to the polls for the third time in months.

The $300,984-a-year entitlement is about $100,000 more than a state backbencher’s salary of just over $200,000, which Ms Chapman will draw when she returns to parliament at the May 3 resumption.

The parliamentary superannuation calculation, which has been supplied to The Advertiser, is more than former Liberal treasurer Rob Lucas’s annual entitlement of $272,000 under a scheme he in March conceded was “rightly judged to be too generous”.

Ms Chapman was elected in 2002 – two years before state and federal parliamentary superannuation entitlements were wound back after a move triggered by former federal Labor leader Mark Latham – and has served the 20 years and one month required to secure maximum benefits.

Her decision to quit politics, revealed by The Advertiser just hours after David Speirs was installed as state Liberal leader on Tuesday, has drawn intense criticism for the cost and inconvenience of a by-election in her southeastern Adelaide seat of Bragg.

Former deputy premier Vickie Chapman at Parliament House. Picture: Matt Turner

The Advertiser sent the parliamentary super estimate to Ms Chapman, who said: “I will be making inquires shortly to ascertain my entitlement options”.

By-elections in February, 2019, to replace former Labor premier Jay Weatherill and his deputy John Rau less than a year after the 2018 election were estimated by the-then treasurer Mr Lucas to cost between $600,000 and $700,000.

Revealing her decision to quit a month after the March 19 state election, Ms Chapman – the state’s first female deputy premier and attorney-general – said she wanted to help usher in generational change within the Liberal Party after the landslide loss.

The timing of her decision enraged some Liberals, with one accusing her of being “blinded by spite”.

Newly elected Bragg MP Vickie Chapman at Parliament House in 2002. p/

Other senior Liberals said her resignation signalled the end of multi-generational factional feuding between her family and that of former state Liberal leader Iain Evans.

“Vickie has created an opportunity for renewal that, with the right addition, should strengthen David Speirs’s team going forward,” one said.

It is understood senior conservative and moderate faction figures have started discussions about who might replace Ms Chapman, with both insisting the candidate will be a woman.

This would rule out former lawyer and Christopher Pyne staffer Jack Batty, who is understood to have indicated interest. Sturt MP James Stevens has ruled out an attempted switch if he loses his federal seat at the May 21 election

Senior Liberals said they hoped Ms Chapman’s replacement would be a woman who could follow in her legacy of substantial achievement.

They said this would be shaped by federal election results, with Boothby and Adelaide candidates Rachel Swift and Amy Grantham to be considered, along with former Elder MP Carolyn Power, who was defeated at the March state poll.