The NBN Co pays its staff handsomely, figures revealed ahead of Senate estimates hearings last week show, with 8% of its 6044 staff taking home more than $200,000.

The Australian reported that 2% of NBN Co employees pocket about $300,000 per annum, while the chief executive Bill Morrow has to make do on $3.56 million.

By comparison, Australia Post told Senate estimates that 0.8% of its employees were paid more than $200,000 per annum.

In terms of numbers, that means more than 480 NBN Co employees get pay packets of more than $200,000 each year while 120 earn packages of more than $300,000.

Another six senior NBN Co executives were earning more than $1 million a year.

On its website, the NBN Co has a long list of comments made by Morrow to the Sanate estimates. However, there is no mention of the salaries paid to staff.

In its latest results, the company announced a loss of $3.3 billion for the nine months to March 2018.

This was up by $1.2 billion, with the loss in the nine months for the previous financial year being $2.7 billion.

The report cited an NBN Co spokesman as defending the salaries paid out, saying: "“To meet our operational goals, NBN Co has recruited highly experienced engineers, project managers, IT engineers, business managers, lawyers, marketers, human resources, and account executives."