Treasurer Rob Lucas will collect annual pension of $272,000 following his retirement

The eye-watering annual pension that Treasurer Rob Lucas will collect following his retirement from politics this weekend has been revealed.

Treasurer Rob Lucas will collect an eye-watering $272,000 annual pension after his retirement from politics this weekend, under a scheme he concedes was “rightly judged to be too generous”.

And the sum will rise every year in line with inflation, meaning it could hit $300,000 in the coming years.

Mr Lucas, 68, who has spearheaded relentless Liberal attacks on Labor’s campaign costings, will retire on a scheme that was discontinued 25 years ago.

He said he had been advised by Super SA that, over his 40-year political career, his own contributions to the “PSS1” pension fund, together with interest on that money, total about $2.4m. “That $2.4m does not involve any taxpayer funding at all,” he said.

Treasurer Rob Lucas will collect an annual pension of $272,000 following this retirement from politics this weekend. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

“As a PSS1 member, I have been required to pay 11.5 per cent of my salary into superannuation.”

When asked by The Advertiser to confirm the $272,000 figure, Mr Lucas agreed the estimate was “close to the mark”.

Mr Lucas, first elected in 1982, said members of the PSS1 scheme reached maximum benefit after 20-21 years of service and, after that, the size of their pension stops increasing.

“After the 20-21 year period is achieved, a member is required to continue to pay 5.75 per cent of their salary into superannuation and 11.5 per cent of higher office salary into superannuation,” he said.

Mr Lucas denied his sizeable salary and pension made it difficult for him to understand the budget pressures of South Australians but agreed a change to the scheme was justified.

“This scheme and similar schemes were rightly judged to be too generous and were closed off to all new applicants decades ago,” he said.

Mr Lucas has conceded the scheme is “too generous”. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas declined to comment on the size of Mr Lucas’s pension and acknowledged “40 years of service to the parliament is an extraordinary record on anyone’s assessment”.

But he said Mr Lucas had marked the final days of his career “in a really sort of disappointing way”.

“I just wish for Rob’s sake that he had chosen to take a more graceful exit rather than just the last few days doing even more pathetic stunts,” Mr Malinauskas said.

Advance SA MLC John Darley said the changes to the parliamentary superannuation scheme were “in keeping with the times”.

“Everyone would like to move back to the good times but we are in 2022 and most people today, if they have superannuation it’s a lump sum scheme, they put their own money into it,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t politicians be treated the same as every other South Australian?”