The law relating to public statutory corporations and their entitlement to Crown privilege with especial reference to the principal New Zealand corporations

Abstract

Until about a century ago, Government dealt principally with foreign relations, the maintenance of domestic peace and order and defence and its functions were consequently so uncomplicated that its activities seldom impinged on the ordinary citizen. Since that time, however, the increasing monetary, social and commercial demands made upon the Crown have led to a vast increase in the fields of governmental activity and these, in their train, have brought considerably greater restriction to the individual. These additional functions were sometimes controlled by Government departments but on nearly one hundred occasions in New Zealand a corporation was set up by public Act to organize, regulate and supervise some particular activity. Most of these bodies fall into a small number of groups in which every organization is similar through a common area of functions and a number of these, in some or all of their activities, are entitled to the exemptions and preferences enjoyed by the Crown. The full diversity and extent of these privileges are outside the scope of this consideration but, since admission of them, in the absence of any contrary statutory provision, involves immunity from a considerable proportion of statute law, freedom from levies and other fiscal liabilities and exemption from a number of procedural requirements, the advantages derivable from that admission can be readily appreciated.