National news LIVE: Australian murder suspect shopped while girl’s body lay in suitcase, climate change and El Nino trigger ‘frustrating’ start to ski season

The Christian Brothers in Australia transferred some of its most valuable colleges to a separate trust for just $1 each but now claims it will be broke by September and unable to compensate hundreds of survivors of shocking clerical abuse.

At least three prominent schools in NSW, including Waverley College in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, were passed by the Catholic order in 2018 to the Trustees of Edmund Rice Education Australia.

Documents obtained by this masthead reveal other NSW schools including St Patrick’s College in Strathfield and St Pius X College in Chatswood were also transferred that year for the nominal consideration of $1 each.

The move came just months before state governments across Australia removed the controversial Ellis Defence, which had limited civil claims against churches since 2007.

The transfer of schools between the two entities has fuelled claims by abuse survivors and their lawyers that the Christian Brothers engaged in a deliberate strategy to shield its assets from civil claims.

Read the full investigation here. 

A striking absence of snow has left Australia’s slopes muddy and bare and the ski industry pinning hopes of a salvageable season on a late downfall to cover the alps.

Skiing businesses rely on the winter school holidays to bring hordes of families to the Australian alps to kick off the ski season.

But as students begin their holidays in Victoria and start marking off the last days before winter holidays begin in NSW this weekend, a glum would-be skier posted a clip of himself standing beneath chair lifts on a slope of dull muddy grass marked by a strip of manufactured snow.

Snow coverage in Australia is in long-term decline due to increasing temperatures caused by climate change, data from the Bureau of Meteorology shows. This year’s season is also expected to be hit by the onset of an El Nino weather pattern, declared by the Bureau of Meteorology on June 16, which causes warmer and drier conditions.

However, resort operators in NSW and Victoria insist the lacklustre start to the season is not uncommon.

Read the full story here.

Good morning and welcome to our national news live coverage for Tuesday, June 30. I’m Emily Kowal, and I will be bringing the news at it happens this morning.

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