Mr Woodhouse was speaking yesterday at a University of Otago business school seminar about top executive pay and whether it helps or hinders organisations.
However, the Cabinet minister and Dunedin-based list MP focused on issues at the other end of the pay divide - zero-hour contracts, the living wage movement, and the aged-care equal pay case.
After a storm of publicity, Mr Woodhouse recently agreed to outlaw certain aspects of controversial zero-hour contracts.
Mr Woodhouse favoured ''light touch'' regulation, particularly in employment relations.
''For someone who holds that view, I seem to be doing an awful lot of regulating right now.''
Mr Woodhouse said he was ''lampooned'' by current affairs show Campbell Live for some of his comments about zero-hour contracts.
''You wouldn't know this from Campbell Live, but I agree with them [about zero-hour contracts].''
Mr Woodhouse likened the contracts to a customer expecting a hire store to hold a piece of equipment for their exclusive use, but only pay for its use when it was required.
''You would be laughed out of the premises ... if we don't do that for our equipment, why on earth would we expect it to be a right to do it to our staff?
''There is an envy that emerges out of very high salaries, but I think there is also a very egalitarian culture in New Zealand, a culture of fairness, and that's why the zero-hours stuff bounced up so strongly.''
Mr Woodhouse gave a rare insight into the Government's thinking on the gender equality case in the aged-care sector.
The Government has made little comment on the Kristine Bartlett test court case, which argues carer pay rates are low because the job is female-dominated.
Mr Woodhouse said last year's Court of Appeal judgement was ''very good'' and should be read by anyone with an interest in the landmark case.
''I don't know what the Government's going to do about that, but I think it was a pretty sensible decision, and one which is going to challenge both workers and the Government to come up with the right answer, probably multiple answers.''
Mr Woodhouse agreed with concerns of an earlier speaker, The Warehouse Group chief executive Mark Powell, about the living wage movement.
It potentially had ''significant unintended consequences'' for young people with less work experience, Mr Woodhouse said.
Mr Powell said the company's ''career retailer'' wage was roughly based on the New Zealand living wage rate, but the company was not signed up to the ''ideological'' campaign.
The campaign was too closely aligned with the minimum wage debate, when they ought to be kept separate by campaigners, he said.
Mr Powell made headlines last year when he described his $1.7 million salary as ''ridiculous''.
He had been bemused by the coverage generated by a single comment, he said yesterday.
His pay was a huge amount to the ''man in the street'', and was worthy of debate.
Some chief executives became ''carried away'', forgetting they were employees and not entrepreneurs who put everything on the line, he said.
The company was keen to increase the status of retail as a career, and paying more than the minimum wage was part of that.
Mr Powell made it clear he was a free-market ''capitalist'', and did not favour too much regulation.
The living wage is set at $19.25 an hour and is voluntary, while the minimum wage is $14.75 an hour.
