Reports are raising concern about the PM’s relationship with an online conspiracy theorist. 

Tim Stewart - a leading advocate of the bizarre and largely baseless QAnon conspiracy narrative - has been friends with Prime Minister Scott Morrison for decades.

Reports this week reveal Mr Stewart’s beliefs are wild enough that his family have notified the national security hotline several times.

“Tim believes that the world has really been taken over by satanic paedophiles, or Luciferian paedophiles,” Mr Stewart’s sister Karen Stewart has told the ABC.

“I don't understand why the PM would want to be seen to be with someone who has such radical beliefs.”

QAnon has emerged in recent years as a kind of uber-theory, allowing adherents to draw links between existing conspiracy theories as they attempt to divine what they see as hidden meanings embedded in online communications by a shadowy leader of the movement known as ‘Q’. 

The links between Mr Stewart and the Prime Minister have been investigated by ABC reporters for an episode of Four Corners. 

The Prime Minister has issued a statement to reporters saying; “This is a politically motivated slur against the Prime Minister and his family by a Four Corners program that is already facing serious questions about the accuracy, bias and credibility of its journalism, that is now giving credence to irrational Twitter conspiracy theorists and raising the profile of what the Prime Minister clearly deems a discredited and dangerous fringe group”.