Taupō election result: Louise Upston wins seat

Taupō MP Louise Upston celebrates a strong performance on Election night 2023, with her supporters.

Louise Upston is looking forward to getting stuck into tackling child poverty as she sails comfortably into a sixth term as the MP for Taupō.

Upston is National’s sixth ranked MP, and was hoping the party’s strong showing will be enough to see her take on the key portfolios of social development and employment.

“If we are serious about reducing families in hardship then the pathway to greater opportunities is through work and that is where the policies we have announced are clearly in that space and I am really excited, if I am given that opportunity, to work in the portfolio. That’s where my focus would be – on supporting people into work.

“You wouldn’t expect, in a country like ours, to have one in five children in a benefit dependent home ... I see the real opportunities to lift children and families out of hardship is to have a parent in work and that’s where I would be really excited, if I had the opportunity to work in social development and employment.”

She was celebrating with volunteers and supporters in Cambridge on election niight and would travel to the southern end of her electorate in Taupō on Sunday to thanks her election team there.

“We have a great crew of supporters here. We have probably had the most activity of any election campaign that I have run - and this is my 6th - in terms of the number of volunteers, the number of people on the ground, the number of phone calls we’ve made, the number of doors we’ve knocked on, the number of letters and leaflets we have delivered.

Taupō MP Louise Upston celebrates a strong performance on Election night 2023, with her supporters.

“So, it is nice to spend some time with my volunteers, acknowledging their efforts and then tomorrow I will go down to Taupō and spend time with the crew at that end of the [electorate] and again, it will be an opportunity for me to acknowledge their contributio.

“No one does this on their own. It is only from having a very strong team that you get a good result and I am really proud of the efforts they have put in.”

She said the mood was the same as 2008, when national swept up all the general electorate seats in the Waikato and central North island.

“The only poll that counts is election day. The polls haven’t really reflected what the realities have been on the ground and so I think about the conversations I’ve been having over the past couple of months, people have been saying we need a change, we want a change and vote from that perspective, but even stronger [support] than I thought it might have been.”

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