Speaking during the opening of Datacom's new datacentre in Albany, Auckland, Key said his comments were inspired by a visit to University of Canterbury's NZI3 ICT centre, a public-private partnership.

"They were showing me a couple of companies operating in the incubator. The companies were effectively online, high definition, video conferencing. It was absolutely amazing."

Key says he is trying to put something similar in government at the moment, albeit with some challenging systems.

"You sit there and say the core bureaucy in Wellington is just under 50,000 people. They travel extensively and have requirements all over New Zealand. You imagine how much we could cut our travel bill if we just started using online video conferencing more effectively."

He says his observation of Parliament after six and a half years is there are "well meaning people in there who provide tremendous services."