CANBERRA - NEW Zealand's new conservative government hopes to widen a free-trade deal with Australia and develop a single capital market between the two neighbours, Prime Minister-elect John Key said on Monday.

Mr Key, in an interview with the Australian newspaper, said he would meet his centre-left Australian counterpart, Mr Kevin Rudd, to discuss his ambitions at this week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.

Mr Key said he hoped to harmonise securities regulation, accounting procedures and some tax legislation to create a single market for investment capital, the paper said.

'I am a very pragmatic person, I am measured and I am not going to be guided by blind ideology,' he said.

Mr Key's centre-right National Party won the largest share of the vote in a November 8 general election, ending nine years of centre-left Labour Party rule under Prime Minister Helen Clark.

A so-called Closer Economic Relations agreement between Australia and New Zealand, signed in 1983, is one of the world's most comprehensive free-trade deals, covering bilateral trade and services worth A$16 billion (S$15.7 billion).

But New Zealand has consistently rejected calls for full economic or currency union to forge a single cross-Tasman economy worth around $1 trillion.

Mr Key, a former foreign exchange dealer with only six years of political experience, said he also hoped to thaw military relations with Washington, but would keep in place a ban on nuclear-armed or powered US vessels visiting New Zealand ports.

Mr Key said on Sunday his party had signed a deal with allies to form a ruling coalition, allowing him to start work on pulling the country and its $128 billion economy out of recession. -- REUTERS