Early Life
Bennett was born in 1969 to Bob Bennett and Lee Bennett. She has 1/8th Tainui ancestry through her half-Māori paternal grandmother, Ailsa Bennett. Her father had a flooring business in Auckland, then in 1974 bought the village store at Kinloch, near Taupo. Bennett attended Taupo-nui-a-Tia College in Taupo. At 17 she gave birth to a daughter, Ana, and raised her alone.
Bennett moved to Auckland in 1992 where she worked in a rest home, first as a dishwasher and then as a nurse aide. She began studying social work at the Albany campus of Massey University in 1994. She became the welfare officer of the Massey University at Albany Students' Association, then, in 1996, the president, which gave her a taste for politics. She dropped the social work component to her course, leaving simply social policy, graduating with a BA.
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