While I'm not a lawyer by any means (nor a current Elder privy congregational arrangements), I do think that legally the Australia Branch doesn't know what to do. Relatively recently, Kingdom Halls/Congregations became individual charities, to no doubt separate Watchtower assets from the Branch. Similar to what has been done in other countries, as I understand.
The paperwork for maintaining these charities is renewed every year. However I heard a few days ago that our congregation was told to hold off on doing it. Whether its linked to the Ellis Defense and the commencement date for the liability of parent organizations to assume responsibility for congregational child abuse claims, I don't know. But it does seem suspicious to me. But if that is linked, then perhaps paying the government fees for continuing the 786 individual charities in the country, rather pointless.
Regardless, it does seems that playing the shell game is over in Australia, and the attempts to legally hide its assets by deflection is not going to work any more ... as once more onus returns back to the branch to provide compensation. This, plus the retrospective ruling will making things a lot harder for the Organization here, which will undoubted lead to more civil actions against it and more sell-offs. Which may even include the Branch complex, which effectively does nothing more that administrative tasks, due to the fact that its printing work has be assigned to Japan and the Design office to an South Sea Island country. 2019 might be rather interesting, in our land down under.
no zombie