Key: Coalition deals to be signed this week

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Coalition deals to form the next government will be signed this week, Prime Minister John Key says.

"Today we'll sign up the deals with Act and United Future and sometime later in the week hopefully with the Maori Party, so it's progressing pretty well," he told TVNZ's Breakfast show.

The deals would allow the party a "buffer" on top of the 61 seats they held, he said.

National had enough seats to govern alone, which made the coalition negotiations "more straight forward", Mr Key said.

"But equally, we sort of know each other quite well now, after six years we got a bit of a sense of the areas of importance and significance to each other and in a perfect world we don't want to pass legislation 61 [to] 60 votes the whole way through, we do want to work with other people."

Mr Key did not rule out working with the Green Party and New Zealand First on a case by case basis.

He would not be drawn on who would be offered specific portfolios.

"One thing that is clear is we've got a couple of slots that have opened up because of Judith [Collins] and Tony Ryall.

"That gives us opportunities, there's lots of contenders - we've got sort of an abundance of riches really, 61 people coming into our caucus, so lots and lots of people wanting to get in and to become ministers, so I'm working my way through that this week."

He told Radio New Zealand Paula Bennett would move on from the Social Development portfolio because she had requested that before the election.

Ms Bennett's area of interest was finance, Mr Key said.