Mr Oakeshott said if an arrangement could be reached in which he could sit in a Labor cabinet but be free to vote as he liked on the floor of Parliament, then a regional development role in a Gillard government would be ''certainly of interest''.

''It would have been easy to say yes on the spot, you know rip in on regional development for Australia,'' Mr Oakeshott said.

''But there's a whole bundle of issues that you have to work through in a situation like that, including it would be an unusual arrangement in a work sense even if it was to be accepted.''

Mr Oakeshott said he was keen to talk to former South Australian National Party MP Karlene Maywald, who was the River Murray minister in the state Labor government until earlier this year, to see how such a model could work.

Mr Oakeshott said he would also consider work-life balance issues in deciding whether to accept a spot in cabinet, and would talk to his wife over the coming days.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Julia Gillard would not comment yesterday on the details of the offer to Mr Oakeshott or how the independent would work with a Labor cabinet.

The new regional Australia portfolio will be established under the deal signed with Mr Oakeshott and fellow independent Tony Windsor in exchange for their support for a minority Labor government. Under the agreement, a new cabinet-level regional Australia portfolio will be established, including a new department and a new cabinet sub-committee chaired by the regional Australia minister and including the Prime Minister and Treasurer.

Labor insiders suggested the regional Australia ministry would be a beefed-up version of the Regional Development portfolio currently held by Anthony Albanese.

Included in the Labor-independent agreement is a $573 million injection into Regional Development Australia, currently overseen by Mr Albanese, and the establishment of a regional development think-tank based at rural universities and given an $8 million one-off government grant.

Mr Oakeshott said that Ms Gillard had not given him a deadline for the decision, but he understood she would probably want to announce her cabinet early next week at the latest and he was aiming to have a firm answer by the end of this week.

Mr Oakeshott said Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had made a similar offer for an unspecified role in a minority Coalition government.