KEY POINTS:
The man in charge of looking after New Zealand's beneficiaries is New Zealand's highest-paid public servant.
The State Services Commission annual report for the year to June shows that the head of the Social Development Ministry, Peter Hughes, had a pay package worth between $530,000 and $539,000 after getting a rise of between $30,000 and $50,000 last year.
The previous year, he was paid between $490,000 and $499,999 for running New Zealand's largest government department.
The size of his pay packet has shocked those working with some of the country's most needy people.
Kay Brereton, a beneficiaries' rights advocate at the Wellington People's Centre, said she saw a great irony that Mr Hughes was the highest-paid public servant while the people his ministry served were the poorest in the country.
Ms Brereton told the Herald last night she was sure Mr Hughes worked hard for his money. But if her centre was given the equivalent of his pay increase, it would be able to employ a fulltime advocate "who would help 1000 people a year to get their full entitlements".
Auckland City Missioner Dianne Robertson said there was still a huge disparity between low- and high-income earners.
Many low-income and middle-income earners were going to food banks and needed other help from the Government.
But she wouldn't begrudge a big salary for anyone who was running a large ministry such as Social Development.
"It's easy to say they shouldn't be getting it, but I don't really know how that compares to the private sector."
Mr Hughes was not the only public service chief to get a pay rise.
In the previous financial year, no chief executive had a salary package worth more than $500,000; in the latest, five were above the half-a-million-dollar mark.
The acting head of the Economic Development Ministry and the head of the Treasury received between $510,000 and $519,999, and the heads of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Health were in the $500,000 to $509,999 bracket.
But the single biggest payout of the year outstripped Mr Hughes. The then head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Geoff Dangerfield, received between $550,000 and $559,000.
The Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs is the lowest payer - its chief executive makes $200,000 to $209,900.
The number of civil servants - excluding chief executives - being paid more than $100,000 a year also increased.
In the 2006-2007 year, 3179 public servants were in six figures; last year that number was up to 3782 - although most were on less than $150,000.
- ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NZPA
