After some controversial back and forth, the ABC is airing an episode of Four Corners on Monday, 14 June. The report, led by award-winning journalist Louise Milligan, focuses on how Australian man Tim Stewart became a vocal, loyal believer in QAnon conspiracy theories. There have been questions about Stewart’s relationship with close friend Prime Minister Scott Morrison for 18 months – although the pandemic understandably took priority in 2020 news coverage, the story was broken by Guardian Australia and kept up by Crikey. So what’s the history between Scott Morrison and this QAnon believer?
Here’s a recap of what we already know about the situation. Read before, during or after you watch the Four Corners report.
Who is Tim Stewart?
Tim Stewart is a 51-year-old Sydney man is a vocal supporter of QAnon conspiracy theories. He operated the QAnon Twitter account @BurnedSpy49, which was one of the biggest QAnon voices in Australia with over 30,000 followers. Twitter permanently deleted the BurnedSpy49 account in September 2020 for “engaging in coordinated harmful activity” – aka spreading conspiracy theories, including ones about Julie Bishop and other local political figures. He believes the 2020 US election was “rigged” and has compared COVID-19 vaccination programs to Nazi-ism.
His 22 year-old son Jesse has also participated in pro-QAnon discussions with his dad in online forums, and has more recently posted in support of “lynching” politicians who support vaccine programs and passports, social distancing restrictions and other COVID-related measures. Jesse claims he is just a “shitposter”.
The New Daily reports that Stewart’s wife Lynelle has also publicly posted about the ‘Great Awakening’ concept, a central belief of QAnon.
Stewart’s extended family have raised concerns about how deeply Tim and Jesse believe in the baseless, dangerous QAnon conspiracies, and have alerted the National Security Hotline about them.
What is QAnon?
This is worth a deep dive all of its own, but in short: QAnon is a wild conspiracy theory that claims the world is being run by a secret group of elite politicians, wealthy business people and celebrities who are Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles. Yeah.
It started in 2017 with a post on anonymous forum 4chan. A user claiming to be someone with high-level US security clearance, calling themselves “Q”, started posting about secret things supposedly happening within the government. Despite the fact that these posts were completely anonymous and used intentionally vague, cryptic language, people believed the posts.
Despite the identity of Q having never been proven (although there are some pretty solid theories about the man who started this whole hoax), the theories found traction with people on the far-right and those who felt like social outcasts. Q’s baseless claims that former US President Donald Trump was working to take down the “evil elite” saw the conspiracies gain support from lots of his followers.
QAnon believers often become quite isolated from their family and friends; taking a closer look at how they’ve been conned is really quite sad.
How does Scott Morrison know Stewart?
The history between Scott Morrison and QAnon-believing Stewart goes back a long way. Morrison’s wife Jenny is best friends with Stewart’s wife, Lynelle. Lynelle has known both Jenny and Scott Morrison since they were in school, and the women were bridesmaids at each other’s weddings. The Morrisons and Stewarts have remained close friends over the years.
Lynelle Stewart worked at Kirribilli House until the end of 2020 as an assistant to Jenny Morrison. It was not in a policy advisory role. Stephanie Foster, from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet last year said that Lynelle passed the “required police checks” in order to be employed at Kirribilli House.
Why are people concerned about this?
Let’s be clear, no one is suggesting that Scott Morrison is a QAnon believer. However, given that QAnon has been deemed a terror threat by the FBI – and Tim Stewart’s ideas were extreme enough to get him blocked on Twitter – people are asking for Morrison to be transparent about his relationship with a man who believes it so strongly.
Morrison himself said that it was “deeply offensive” to suggest he would be supportive of “such a dangerous organisation.”
Stewart told The Guardian that he has “never spoken to Scott about anything of a political nature.” However, in 2019 Crikey reported on multiple messages with then-QAnon believer, Eliahi Priest, in which Tim Stewart claimed to be sending information “straight to Scott.” Priest showed these messages in the Four Corners report. According to Priest, Morrison included the phrase “ritual abuse” in his apology speech for institutional sex abuse at the request of Stewart as a nod to the QAnon community. “Ritual sex abuse” is not a phrase reference in the institutional abuse Royal Commission.
Tune in. Monday night on #4corners. https://t.co/4VDAZvElGt
— Four Corners (@4corners) June 11, 2021
What is in the ABC Four Corners report?
The Four Corners report featured interviews with Tim Stewart’s parents and sister, Karen. It focussed on his family members’ concern about how deeply Tim has been pulled into the QAnon world and how radicalised he has become. It also closely explored Stewart’s history and connection to Morrison, including:
- Lynelle’s job working as a house attendant at Kirribilli House, which ended last year
- Tim Stewart’s access to Kirribilli House, including house sitting the Government property with his wife and son while the Morrisons were away
- Messages Stewart sent to other QAnon supporters, in which he clearly says he will raise issues with Morrison
- Whether or not the term “ritual abuse” was a dog whistle to QAnon believers
The investigation was fronted by Louise Milligan, the same journalist who broke the story about Christian Porter’s rape allegations – Porter recently withdrew his defamation lawsuit against her.
You can watch the episode on iView.
