The Honorable Louise Upston fills a lot of shoes, as Minister for Land Information, Minister for Women, Associate Minister of Local Government, and Associate Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, as well as being the MP for Taupo.

Louise was invited to the Bay of Plenty by Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller yesterday and had a busy day, fulfilling all of her titles and visiting numerous areas around Tauranga.

Louise Upston and Todd Muller comparing wigs. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

First attending a women's business meeting on The Strand in her Minister for Women role, Louise also paid a visit to local council as the Associate Minister of Local Government, followed by a seniors meeting which she says 'was kind of everything”.

She then met with a hydrological survey company, which fulfilled her Minister for Land Information role, and finally ended her flit around the Bay with a visit to Blow Hair Co as a part of her Associate Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment portfolio.

Directors of Blow Hair Co Philip McKinnon and Aarron Fenwick, along with Sixth Avenue salon manager Kaye Greenshields sat outside in the sun with Louise and Todd, and talked about literacy and numeracy, apprentices, and hairdresser education.

'[Numeracy and literacy] is a regular issue with hairdressers though, because a lot of them have fallen out of school.

'Coming into this industry they have the opportunity to learn visually and with quite personalized training programmes as apprentices so schools verses apprenticeships personally apprenticeships can deliver a more service for the money they're pay and the education they're going to receive,” Kaye says.

'It's a very prevalent thing we deal with it, but it's all how we deal with it.”

Louise says the system needs to be more 'flexible and responsive” in order to reach the learner in the way that will teach them best.

She says this may be learning on the job for some, and for others it may be teaching schools.

'There will be some learners that are better suited in your environment and some learners that are better suited in the other one.”

Louise also met with apprentices and trainers at the hairdressers to hear how they have successfully embedded literacy and numeracy in their training programme.