Background
Louise McGill was born in North Shore and grew up in East Coast Bays.
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Louise Upston
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She attended Rangitoto College, from which she graduated in 1988, and where she was friends with Amy Adams.
Career
She has represented the Taupō electorate in the House of Representatives since the 2008 election. In New Zealand"s Fifth National Government, led by Prime Minister John Key, she has been Minister for Women"s Affairs and Minister for Land Information since 8 October 2014. Her parents are Ian and the late Norma McGill.
McGill dropped out of law school and instead founded a management consultancy firm, McGill Manning, when she was 19.
Her clients included Air New Zealand, Russell McVeagh, and Datacom Group. She then studied at the Waikato Management School and graduated with a Master of Business Administration.
McGill married Craig Upston, and they have three children. The Upston family lives in Karapiro.
Upston was elected to Parliament at the 2008 general election for the Taupō electorate, where she unseated Mark Burton, a Labour cabinet minister who had represented the area for 15 years.
She received attention in the media for comments made in her maiden statement to the House of Representatives, such as her slogan approach to crime: "The police are good. The criminals are bad. lieutenant"s that simple."
In the 2011 election, she more than doubled her majority to 14,115 votes.
This made Taupō one of the safest seats in the country.
Her majority increased to 15,046 votes in the 2014 election. Upston was appointed to Junior Whip for the National Government after the 2011 election.
Following the February 2013 reshuffle by John Key, Upston was elected Chief Whip and joined by Tim Macindoe and Jami-Lee Ross who act as Junior and Third Whip in Parliament. Upston is generally conservative on conscience issues: she voted against the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill in 2013, and voted to raise the purchase age of alcohol to 20.
As at 14 December 2015, she is a minister outside cabinet with responsibility for the Ministry of Land Information and the Ministry for Women.
Membership
Since before the age of ten, she had wanted to become a member of parliament.
