For close to 18 months the prime minister has done his level best to keep his relationship with a QAnon family friend out of the public domain. Now, courtesy of an ABC decision to halt a Four Corners investigation from airing on Monday night, the news is everywhere. It was even on Seven’s Sunrise this morning.
Crikey has been reporting in detail on the relationship between Scott Morrison’s wife, Jenny, and her best friend Lynelle Stewart, whose husband, Tim, became at one point Australia’s most prominent QAnon adherent, as measured by Twitter followers.
The Morrisons and the Stewarts are long-term family friends going back to when the two couples were married almost 30 years ago, but Morrison is no longer an ordinary suburban bloke and Sharks fan. And Lynelle has been paid by the taxpayer as a government-employed helper for Jenny, working at Kirribilli House. So the relationship is fair game for public scrutiny — although it is one that most of the mainstream media has dodged for close to two years.
The key issue is the potential security threat and what, if any, actions Australia’s security services have taken. On that we have precious little information.
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Stewart family expressed concern
Earlier this year Tim Stewart’s sister, Karen Stewart, told Crikey that the Stewart family was so worried that it had reported its concerns to “the authorities”. The concern was driven by a series of tweets supporting the violent storming of Capitol Hill in January after Donald Trump lost the presidency.
The Stewarts believed Tim had tweeted under the since-deleted Twitter account Spies Like Us (@RealStealthSpy). Crikey also published evidence of Tim and his 22-year-old son, Jesse, in discussion with US QAnon figures during the height of the Trump-induced madness. The 90-minute discussion was via a QAnon online channel, the Patriot Voice, with the Stewarts given special billing as Australian guests under their Twitter names Burn Notice and Negan_HQ, respectively.
Yet despite the family’s evident anxiety about how far Tim Stewart had gone down the rabbit hole, the prime minister’s office had no comment.
Last year parliamentary hearings also confirmed that Lynelle Stewart was employed through the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC). Under questioning from ALP Senator Penny Wong, the PMC’s deputy secretary, Stephanie Foster, told the hearing that all appropriate checks were undertaken, “including the relevant police checks”.
Another official said all three staff employed at the prime minister’s Sydney residence had security clearances. Disconcertingly though, the PMC also claimed at the same October 2020 hearings to have no knowledge that Tim Stewart’s Twitter account had been suspended by Twitter or the reasons for it.
Does Tim Stewart wield any influence directly or indirectly on the prime minister? He certainly claimed that he did when it came to Morrison’s 2018 parliamentary apology to survivors of institutional sex abuse. As we reported, Morrison’s speech included a reference to “ritual” sex abuse, when referring to institutional sex abuse. The “ritual” tag was in line with the driving QAnon belief that the world has been overtaken by Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
Again, Morrison’s office refused to answer that question.
The Four Corners investigation has been carrying on for several weeks. The program was reportedly deferred a month ago pending further work. Pressure? What pressure?
The decision at the most senior levels of the ABC to block its planned airing on Monday will raise issues of the broadcaster’s editorial independence and whether it has pre-emptively buckled to head off further anger from the Coalition government, already seething over Four Corners’ coverage of Christian Porter.
The question is pointed because the program was reportedly cleared by the ABC’s legal department and approved by senior editorial executive in charge of investigations, John Lyons. It was halted after the ABC’s head of news declined to give it his backing and referred the story upstairs.
Consider the timing: at the beginning of the week the ABC emerged from a protracted and bitter court action over whether or not Four Corners alleged the former attorney-general was a brutal rapist.
Yesterday senior Liberal figure Michael Kroger savaged the ABC’s chair, Ita Buttrose. She was “a hopeless failure”. Appointing her was a massive mistake. Programs like Four Corners were “political acid in the face of the Liberal Party”. There were people in the cabinet who “regretted” her appointment. She had lost control and should be sacked. Close observers of how power works in Australia will note this was all given a generous run in The Australian.
The Australian also reported that the ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, was prepared to apologise personally to Porter for two tweets sent out by Four Corners’ staffers — an abject, cap-in-hand moment for the boss of the independent broadcaster.
The day before that, LNP backbencher George Christensen let rip on the alleged bias of the ABC and called on his colleagues to “strike while the iron was hot” against the broadcaster.
All roads lead to Porter
All these, of course, have one thing in common: conservatives’ anger at Four Corners’ coverage of Porter.
In one interpretation, the ABC dodged a bullet at the beginning of the week when Porter withdrew his defamation action. Porter claimed the ABC had been forced to make humiliating concessions as part of the settlement — in truth the humiliation appeared to be all his.
Yet amid the claim and counterclaim of who “won” there was a sober truth for the ABC. The ABC’s government enemies will never forgive it for the manner in which it pursued Porter.
And then, within days of the settlement, along comes Four Corners again. Reporter Louise Milligan. Again.
At the same time Buttrose finds herself surrounded by fresh government appointments, dropped into the highest reaches of the ABC and privy to its operational secrets. In a press club address she raised her concerns about being excluded from the board selection process which appears to have at least in part favoured mates over merit.
And on Monday Anderson is due to return to Canberra for a further grilling on the ABC’s Porter settlement.
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Of course this helps to explain why the government can’t seem to do any actual, err, governing. They’re too busy looking at every word that is published out of the ABC, keeps them far too busy to do unimportant things like actually deliver vaccines to health centres, clinics and GPs, or to construct viable quarantine facilities, or do anything on climate change.
They have their priorities, if you don’t like them they have no others.
Oh I don’t know – the ABC might be being quite clever.
“We’ve got this program about the PM and we’re not sure when or whether to run it ” might shut a few big mouths for a while.
Agreed, my money would always be on Ita. I suspect some ‘ammunition’ is being stored for future strategic use.
Ita has never confronted Power – always the Handmaid.
That would be encouraging were it true. Unfortunately, I doubt it.
Two articles in Crikey today refer to “rabbit holes”.
Isn’t Crikey itself a bit too inclined to assume there is a specific “rabbit hole” and not a warren of varying depths and dead ends? And which part of this complex of mainly weird notions is Tim Stewart really an “adherent” of? And which of these does Scott Morrison allow to influence his role as PM?
Crikey appears to me to be too eager to allow its anti-Christian biases to colour its coverage of this story.
There is plenty to criticise in Morrison and his government, but this whole story – at this stage – looks like Crikey cherry-picking an opportunity to use confirmation bias to create a beat-up.
The rabbit hole here leads to Alice’s Wonderland, a place where nothing makes sense. It leads to the court of the queen of hearts’ “Off with his head”, and the mad hatter’s tea party. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I don’t know if that is reflective of QAnon. It certainly reminds me of the national Cabinet, though.
While the rest of us are running a caucus race except that we are all losers, despite dancing as fast as we can.
I can’t grasp whatever point you’re trying to make in your second paragraph, but I don’t really care; it seems to do down a rabbit-hole of its own.
Please explain WhereTF one can find an ‘anti-Christian bias’ in the article.
True there is very little if any ‘Christian’ principles in anything Morrison or Porter do in public life. Harassing Whistelblowers and refugees for example.
Robodebt?
Keith T, Morrison himself is doing a much better job at instilling “anti-Christian biases” than Crikey itself could ever begin to dream of. And that’s the point really – Scotty and Jenny’s own so-called religiosity is so divisive and so extreme, that their links to the QAnon nutters are just rancid icing on a rotten cake.
I see a story with Milligan or Meldrum-Hana and just know it’s a must read. Two of the most trusted investigative reporters in Australian media. Not surprised if it was Gaven Morris who booted it upstairs. Wasn’t he the bloke who canned Emma Alberici because she upset the coalition government?
Yep
Yes – spineless critter that he is. Alberici was a solid journalist, thrown under a bus.
I have friends who hold nutty views -they are well regarded professionals in their own field – so what would be the point of doing media event about their nutty views and their friendship with me if I were a public figure – none other than to imply [a]- I too hold their views [b] -was bit nutty too to associate with them.
So the ABC for once has made a decision which is sensible and shows a proper managerial approach to management of a corporation’s employees.
you and your friends with nutty views aren’t making the laws of the land while simultaneously having snouts in the trough of tax payer money.
With regard to Stewart and Morrison, Hardaker asserts that “the key issue is the potential security threat”. Have you a view about this? I doubt if anyone thinks ASIO should take an interest in you or your friends.
I wouldn’t mind ASIO looking at me and friends if it was required, but I don’t think the ABC and producers etc are ASIO analysts.
The salient point is “…if it was required..” – by whom?
To what end?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Spooks are a law unto themselves, very dangerous to the Common Weal.