It should come as no surprise the state of wage growth and job stability is dire. The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show there has been a decline of 5.1 per cent in total wages and 4.4 per cent down in payroll jobs since March.

But in the world of government business enterprises (GBEs), hybrid organisations that act like corporations but are controlled by government, the global pandemic and Australia's first recession in nearly three decades had a minimal impact on senior pay packets.

Heads of some of the biggest government companies in the country have had double-digit percentage increases to their remuneration packages and bonuses during the 2019-20 financial year, annual reports show.

It comes after a recent revelation made by Australia Post chief executive Christine Holgate at a Senate estimates hearing over four Cartier watches bought in 2018, totalling nearly $20,000, resulted in her resignation and a subsequent probe.

Before the watches were ever publicly revealed, Australia Post agreed to forgo nearly $7 million in bonuses this year after mounting pressure by the government and the opposition amid the pandemic.

Annual reports across the government's eight other GBEs, however, show remuneration packages and bonuses spiralled into the millions during last financial year.

Ms Holgate's $20,000 admission might have caught headlines but her total remuneration package of $1.6 million, which included no bonuses, isn't the highest of the GBEs in Australia.

That title goes to Stephen Rue, NBN Co's chief executive, who took home a total remuneration package of more than $3.1 million alone. Mr Rue's base salary is $1.87 million, according to the 2019-20 annual report, but received a further $1.18 million in bonuses. It marks a 20 per cent spike on what he earned last year from the hybrid Commonwealth company.

The bonuses come months after the NBN Co announced 800 workers would be losing their jobs as the network inches closer to its final rollout.

Trailing a million dollars behind Mr Rue is Paul Broad, Snowy Hydro Limited's chief executive. At $2.1 million, Mr Broad is the second-highest paid GBE head taking home a base salary of $1.1 million with nearly a million in bonuses. Unlike Mr Rue, Mr Broad's $2.1 million pay cheque marks a 20 per cent decrease on his 2018-19 pay.

The heads of remaining GBEs under the Department of Finance, including Defence Housing Australia, Australian Naval Infrastructure (ANI), Moorebank Intermodal Company (MIC), WSA Co and ASC, earned remuneration packages ranging between half a million and a little more than $800,000.

The Australia Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) has not yet released its annual report for the year.

The overall total of the nine GBE's remuneration packages extend into the millions, partly due to incentive bonuses referred to as STIs, or short term incentives.

While the total cost of NBN Co's executive management remuneration package sits at $11.42 million for the recent financial year, $2.91 million of it is made up of performance bonuses. Similarly, Snowy Hydro executive received a total of $7.93 million in remuneration with $2.78 million of it being bonuses.

Between the NBN Co and the Snowy Hydro's senior management alone, 15 people received $5.7 million in bonuses over the year.

On a smaller scale, MIC, responsible for constructing a freight and warehousing terminal in Sydney, received nearly $269,000 in bonuses across its six key management positions. It marks a 235 per cent bonus increase on the previous year's figures.

While the figures are eye-watering for many in the lower rungs of the public sector or even the corporate world, they're well within the legislation that dictates them.

Professor Andrew Podger, a public policy expert and former senior public servant, explained GBEs were set up to operate more like the private sector and that meant reflecting the typically larger salaries too.

"[GBEs] traditionally provide performance bonuses and those performance bonuses are often quite substantial - a lot more than the value of those [Cartier] watches - and that has been the practice of Australia Post and the other GBEs for 30 years plus," Professor Podger said.

"The idea of giving substantial performance bonuses and, from time to time, giving particular awards for particular achievements is nothing particularly new."

Unlike government departments or agencies, GBEs have shareholders but those shareholders are government ministers.

Ministers appoint the board, who the government holds accountable for performance, while the board appoints a CEO, who it then holds to account.

Taxpayer support for these organisations is typically minimal or non-existent, Professor Podger said, but there were still expectations on how they acted because of the community service obligations some GBEs, like Australia Post, had.

"For the most part, they run commercially and are therefore relying on revenues from their [market] activities, but there may be direct or indirect taxpayers support," Professor Podger said.

"For example, when there are community service obligations, as Australia Post is given, that is explicitly recognised in the amount of dividends they're expected to provide.

"They are serving the public and there would be some sense of a commitment around that and values around that but they won't be the same as the public service's departments."

The outrage that ensued after Australia Post's Cartier watch scandal was publicly revealed resulted in the resignation of a chief executive and a government probe into how it was allowed to happen.

For anti-corruption and governance expert, Professor A J Brown, this only raised more questions about how GBEs operate and how the government holds them to account.

"I think by highlighting the Cartier watch issue, and investigating it, [the government has] raised a bigger question than just Australia Post," Professor Brown said.

"They've raised a question that is also about their own oversight and whether they're exercising it correctly as shareholders."

Part of the issue stems from the fact that GBEs operate in a quasi-public, quasi-private space.

Professor Brown said a good, hard think was needed to figure out how to sort out the accountability gap GBEs were facing.

"We know this from research over a long period of time of this sort of accountability gap creeping in because GBEs end up being treated as if they're neither one thing nor the other," Professor Brown said.

"It hinges formally on how well the shareholding ministers are exercising their duties and then that often does fall back on the department.

"Then the department is caught between a rock and a hard place because it's a bit like saying 'Well, we're not meant to apply the normal full public service rules to this so therefore we should be hands off'.

"It requires some pretty active thinking about what is current best practice."