Prime Minister John Key talks about son Max’s music and cyber-bullying fears
Prime Minister John Key says he is proud of his son Max’s musical success, but worries about personal attacks against him online.
Max released his debut single last month while starting his new role as a resident DJ for GeorgeFM, receiving a mixed response.
While the single, Forget You, was praised by some – including, surprisingly, John Key’s nemesis Kim Dotcom – critics added to the stack of vitriolic social media posts about him.
Key told MoreFM he was proud of Max’s success, after all the time he spent working on the single.
“He was tinkering around with the thing for ages at home, changing it and doing this and that, but yeah it’s quite cool for him.
“I don’t know much about music, and of course like art it’s in the eyes of the beholder, but it’s quite commercial, and I think it’s really good – it really mixes in with a bit of his DJing.”
Speaking about a GeorgeFM segment where Max read out angry tweets and other posts aimed at him, Key said his son handled criticism “amazingly well” but he did worry about the personal attacks.
“He gets a lot of haters on his Instagram or his Facebook or whatever – but he also gets a lot of people supporting him.
“But I say to him, ‘Look, you appreciate that half the country’s not going to terribly like me because they don’t vote for what we’re doing and the sort of people that are probably going on that anyway are pretty aggressive, and just don’t take it personally’, but he’s really good, he understands that.”
Key said the criticism was “a bit of a load for any young person to carry”, and the problem was one that many young Kiwis faced.
“It’s one of the issues where, in the last term of government, I did this big project on youth mental health issues, we put in about $64 million…because I was and am worried about youth suicide rates.
“In one of reviews, I was saying to the reviewers who came in, I do worry about this online cyber-bullying, not just for Max but every kid – it’s really awful out there on Facebook and Snapchat and all the rest of it.”
