Margie Abbott

Margaret Veronica "Margie" Abbott (born 1 February 1958) is the wife of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. She runs a childcare centre in Sydney.

Margaret Veronica Aitken was born in Hutt Hospital, Lower Hutt, New Zealand to Max and Gail Aitken, and grew up in Wainuiomata. 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. She is a Catholic, like her husband.

Max Aitken is a member of the New Zealand Labour Party and Gail is also a Labour voter. There were pictures of Labour leaders in the kitchen of the family home. Margie was also briefly a member of the Labour Party.

Margie Aitken attended Fernlea School and Wainuiomata College, where among other studies she took part in a pioneering Maori-language course. 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.

In 1988 while at Rothschilds, she met Tony Abbott at a Sydney pub. He was then a journalist with The Bulletin. He proposed after taking her on the Kokoda Track. They married at Riverview Chapel on 24 September 1988, and have since had three daughters.

Abbott runs a community-based not-for-profit child care centre in St Ives, New South WalesSydney, which employs 10 staff and cares for children from around 100 families. She continued as a director of the centre after her husband became prime minister.

In September 2013, Abbott said that, unlike her husband, she was open to discussion about gay marriage. 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". Margie Abbott was a member of the New Zealand Labour party before meeting Tony Abbott, as were her parents and extended family with exception of her young nephew, Simon Aitken, who is a National supporter.