Appropriately for an old Liberal gunslinger like Rob Lucas, his career circumstances now resemble something from a Western; he’s worth more (politically) dead than alive.

In purely financial terms, Lucas is more valuable in retirement than he is as Shadow Treasurer.

As a member of parliament for over 30 years, he will be the beneficiary of the old ‘gold-plated’ super scheme, with an annual payout comprising the lion’s share of his highest-paid position’s present rate.

Lucas’s highest-paid role was when he served as Treasurer under John Olsen.

Since 2007, when he stepped down as the Liberals’ Upper House leader, he has remained on a backbench wage – plus a stipend for committee duties – despite mostly holding a shadow ministerial portfolio.

The current salary for a backbencher is $153,260. But InDaily understands Lucas’s pension had he retired in 2007 would have been around $180,000 – $50,000 more than the then-backbench salary. Which means in the past eight years Lucas has foregone more than $400,000 in lost earnings by choosing to remain an MP.

And, he insists, it is a sacrifice he will continue to make, committing to see out the eight-year term to which he was re-elected only last year. That will see him clock up 40 years as a parliamentarian – and, if the Liberals again fail at the ballot box in 2018, could see him having foregone prospective earnings approaching $1 million by the time he does retire.

“As long as I’m vertical and breathing, I’m trying to help Steven Marshall get back into Government by 2018,” Lucas told InDaily.

But he conceded he “wouldn’t be intending to go any further” than 2022, by which time he hopes “there’ll be a team of people ready, willing and able to take over and win future electoral battles”.

Lucas, 62 in June, last week gave an emotional speech to parliament about his mother Yvonne, and her journey to Australia as a Japanese “war bride”.

So uncharacteristic was the public display, it prompted some of his colleagues to muse that he might be, finally, about to pull the pin.

But Lucas laughs off the suggestion, saying the “important life event” that prompted the speech was not impending retirement but “my mother’s passing in November”.

“Health permitting, I’m hanging around so we can get back into Government (and) we don’t get that chance till 2018,” he said.

“So I’m fully invested in hanging around as long as Steven Marshall sees value in me continuing to assist the team … If at some stage he decides he doesn’t need me any more, I’ll contemplate my future.”

Lucas wouldn’t comment on how much he stood to earn – and how much he had foregone – as one of the few serving beneficiaries of the now-abandoned ‘gold-plated’ scheme.

“For the record, the only reason I’m still in parliament is I love the job, my leader thinks I can obviously contribute and I’m bloody desperate for us to get back into Government,” he said.

“It’s taken a lot longer than I would have contemplated when we lost Government in 2002.”

Lucas stepped down as the Opposition’s Legislative Council leader in 2007 – despite “indications of sufficient support from my colleagues for me to continue” – after Martin Hamilton-Smith seized the Liberal leadership from Iain Evans and dumped him from his frontbench.

He resisted pressure from the then-party leadership, including state director Christopher Moriarty, to leave politics altogether.

“I am happy in the service,” he said at the time. “I am pre-selected until 2014 and it is my intention to serve out my term.”

And one more after that.