New Zealand First's new List MP Clayton Mitchell is today spending time with family and friends ahead of joining his new party in the capital, which he says voters chose to bring balance to the Beehive.

With New Zealand First winning 8.85 per cent of the party vote in last night's election results, Clayton is one of the party's 11 List MPs heading to Wellington, which will trigger a Tauranga City Council byelection for his Mount-Papamoa Ward councillor seat.

New Zealand First's new List MP Clayton Mitchell, with his family today at Mount Maunganui.

Sporting a croaky voice, thanks to too much chattering in the last few weeks, Clayton told SunLive he's been going through the post-mortems and what ifs with friends and family and is 'very excited” about his new role.

'I'm very, very pleased with the result and I think it just shows in spades really for us to get the 8.9 per cent, which is a big increase on our 6.7 per cent from the previous election.”

Asked what bolstered New Zealand First's party vote, Clayton says voters were thinking about trying to balance out government.

'NZ First is genuine centre-line party looking after the best interests of all New Zealanders, no matter whether you've got money in corporations and commercial sectors, or are newly-employed we are really trying to balance things out.

'And I think when you look at our common sense policies against the likes of National and Labour, we're are balanced.

'We were looking at raising the minimum wage to $17 but we were the only also looking to offset this through relief for businesses because over the last six years we've had increases but no balance for businesses.”

Clayton says it's also a coup for NZ First doing so well against 'a juggernaut of a party with a massive marketing budget” with advertising on every mainstream media.

'We are literally made up of people doing raffles, cake stalls and sausage sizzles and we're a very humble, modest party with strong values.”

Clayton says he's already spoken to a number of his party leader Winston Peters' right-hand team.

'The words of wisdom are: ‘let's get out caucus together, our feet under the table there's a lot to learn' as we have a number of newbies in party heading to Wellington.

'So I'm looking forward to hearing from parliamentary services of when we all go to Wellington to meet and get around the table to start thrashing out what we need to.”

Clayton says once he's sworn in as an MP in Wellington he's got his notice ready to hand into Tauranga City Council, which will trigger the by-election.

He says the two things in NZ that really need addressing are inequality – 'the gap that seems to be getting wider and wider and wider” – and separatism.

'And it sounds like a bit of cliché, but it's [inequality] a bigger problem than what a majority of people understand.

'We've got people out there, mum and dad working full-time trying to bring in enough money to support their families to the point where it's breaking down family values.”

Clayton says the second issue is separatism. 'We've got to become a one NZ – we've got to work towards getting rid of separatist policies that ingratiate people by birth-right.

'I think those are the two main issues but there's lots of others.”