David Kirk. Photo / AP

David Kirk. Photo / AP

It's 8pm on a cool Sydney evening and David Kirk is trying to persuade me to drink what's left of his bottle of beer.

It's not that he doesn't want it - on the contrary, it appears - but his glass is half full and he's concerned that I don't even have one.

For someone who has been in the news for days for accepting a A$4.1 million ($5 million) golden parachute from his former employer - just months before it announced an annual loss of hundreds of millions of dollars - Kirk is remarkably relaxed.

We have agreed to meet at the corporate headquarters of the mighty Macquarie Bank, where Kirk has just addressed an event organised by the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), to discuss how New Zealand should close the economic gap with Australia.

Just the previous day he had returned from watching the All Blacks wallop the Wallabies in Tokyo, and seems more concerned about being asked to decide which rugby team should join the Super 15 franchise, than the fuss about his Fairfax payout.

Kirk's sudden departure from one of Australia's top corporate jobs just before Christmas last year was part of a messy boardroom battle that may not be over for some time yet, despite the company's new chairman insisting otherwise at its AGM this week.

He warns me he is going to be "charming but unhelpful" on the subject. But while we mostly talk about what is wrong with New Zealand, he seems happy to drop heavy hints that he has unfinished business in the media industry - and is even prepared to say that radical solutions might be required.

Kirk's three-year tenure at Fairfax Media is of more than just passing interest to Kiwis who continue to live on this side of the Tasman.

In Australia the company is best known for publishing the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age and the Australian Financial Review. But it also owns a swag of newspapers in New Zealand, including the Dominion Post, the Press and the Sunday Star-Times, as well as magazines such as TV Guide, Cuisine, NZ Gardener, and NZ House & Garden.

Under his reign the company pursued an aggressive expansion strategy which cost billions of dollars and saw its digital division dramatically increase in size.

In Brisbane and Perth, where it didn't have established newspapers, it launched online-only mastheads. And in 2007 it filled in the gaps in the rural areas by merging with the Rural Press group, in a deal worth A$2.9 billion.

While it has been criticised in Australia for failing to stem the loss of classified ads to competitors, that's not the case here. Kirk was personally responsible for its decision to fork out a whopping $700 million for online auction site Trade Me - a sum that initially bewildered analysts on both sides of the Tasman.