Background
Margaret Veronica Aitken was born in Hutt Hospital, Lower Hutt, New Zealand to Max and Gail Aitken, and grew up in Wainuiomata.
Margaret Veronica Aitken was born in Hutt Hospital, Lower Hutt, New Zealand to Max and Gail Aitken, and grew up in Wainuiomata.
Margie Aitken attended Fernlea School and Wainuiomata College, where among other studies she took part in a pioneering Maori-language course.
She runs a childcare centre in Sydney. Both parents worked for the Post Office, Max as deputy chief postmaster of Wellington, and Gail as a typist. She has a brother, Greg, a former private investigator.
The family has always been very sport-oriented.
Max Aitken is a senior soccer administrator, and Margie played soccer and netball for a number of years. There were pictures of Labour leaders in the kitchen of the family home.
At the age of 16, she entered teachers college in Wellington, and after graduation taught primary school in Upper Hutt and Wainuiomata. She taught Maori both there and later in Australia.
She later worked at a recruitment firm, and in 1983 followed her boss to Sydney, Australia when he sold the company.
Her next career move was to the marketing department of Rothschild Australia, a merchant bank in Sydney. Abbott runs a community-based not-for-profit child care centre in Street Ives, New South Wales Sydney, which employs 10 staff and cares for children from around 100 families. She told the media "I suppose at the end of the day I think that love, commitment, are things that should be recognised and I think it"s a conversation that Australia needs to have".
Max Aitken is a member of the New Zealand Labour Party and Gail is also a Labour voter. Margie was also briefly a member of the Labour Party.
