Wynyard Investments Pty Ltd v Commissioner for Railways - [1955] HCA 72 - HCA 1955 case summary — Zoe

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Wynyard Investments Pty Ltd v Commissioner for Railways

[1955] HCA 72

High Court of Australia|1955-07-01|Before: Taylor JJ

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Court

High Court of Australia

Decision date

1955-07-01

Before

Taylor JJ

Source

Original judgment source is linked above.

Judgment (47 paragraphs)

[1]

High Court of Australia Williams, Webb, Fullagar, Kitto and Taylor JJ. Wynyard Investments Pty Ltd v Commissioner for Railways (NSW) [1955] HCA 72

[2]

This is an appeal from an order of the Full Supreme Court of New South Wales discharging a rule nisi for a writ of prohibition sought by the appellant directed to a magistrate and the Commissioner for Railways restraining them from further proceeding on an order made by the magistrate sitting as a Court of Petty Sessions on 23rd September 1954 whereby the commissioner was adjudged entitled to possession of certain premises situate at Wynyard Railway Station, Sydney, and a warrant was ordered to issue giving possession of these premises to the commissioner. The facts can be shortly stated. On 9th May 1949 the commissioner leased the premises in question to one Collins for a term of five years from 15th July 1949. The tenancy was assigned to the appellant on 17th July 1952. Immediately upon the expiry of the term the commissioner took proceedings under Pt. IV of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1899-1948 to recover possession of the premises. At the conclusion of the case for the informant the tenant asked that the information should be dismissed on the ground that the informant was not the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales within the meaning of s. 5 (a) of the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act 1948-1952 and was therefore bound by that Act and could only bring proceedings for ejectment in accordance with its provisions. But the magistrate held that the informant was the Crown within the meaning of that sub-section and that the Act did not therefore apply to the informant. The question whether the magistrate was right or not in so holding was the only question at issue before the Supreme Court and it is the only question at issue before us.

[6]

But, in the present case, as will be seen, the New South Wales legislature has expressed its intention on this question to a sufficient extent to enable us to dispose of this appeal, and this will relieve us from the task of examining the many authorities that bear upon it. In these circumstances it will be sufficient simply to mention four of the many cases where the relevant principles are discussed. The first is a case in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Skinner v. Commissioner for Railways [2] , the next two are cases in this Court - Grain Elevators Board (Vict.) v. Dunmunkle Corporation [3] and Bank of New South Wales v. The Commonwealth [4] , and the fourth is the recent decision of the House of Lords in Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. v. Administrator of Hungarian Property [5] . It will be sufficient at this stage to refer to the more important provisions of the New South Wales Acts which bring the question to a head. There is first the Government Railways Act 1912-1953. Section 4 of this Act incorporated the "Railway Commissioners for New South Wales" and provides that the corporation "by that name shall have perpetual succession and a common seal, and be capable of suing and being sued, and, subject to the provisions hereinafter contained, shall have power to take, purchase, sell, lease, and hold lands, goods, chattels, and other property for the purposes of this Act. But no sale or lease of any such lands, except as provided in section eighteen, shall have any force or effect until the same has been approved by the Governor". Section 18 provides that "The commissioners may lease any refreshment-room, shed, office, shop, stall, coal gears, sites for storage or for erecting sheds, right of entrance into any station by any public vehicle, right of advertising, or other convenience or appurtenance to any of the railways, for any term not exceeding five years on such conditions and at such rent as they may determine". The other material provisions of that Act and of the Transport (Division of Functions) Act No. 31 of 1932 are conveniently summarized by Jordan C.J. in Skinner's Case [1] : "The Government Railways Act 1912, No. 30, as amended, provides for the appointment of Railway Commissioners who are a body corporate capable of suing and being sued (s. 4). All the railways, tramways and rolling stock constructed or acquired on behalf of the Crown are vested in them and they are empowered to conduct them as a trading business. All moneys payable to the commissioners are collected and received by them on account of His Majesty and must be paid into the Government Railways Fund in the Treasury: ss. 14 and 41B. Section 143 of the Act, as amended by No. 19 of 1936, s. 5, provides that all actions against the commissioners or against any other person for anything done or omitted or purporting to have been done or omitted under the Act shall be commenced within one year after the act or omission complained of was committed or made. Section 144 requires a month's notice to be given before any such action may be brought. Sections 145 and 146 assume that the commissioners are liable in tort. By the Transport (Division of Functions) Act 1932, No. 31, it was provided that there should be a Ministry of Transport under the Minister of Transport which should be divided into departments, one of which is the Department of Railways which shall be administered by the Commissioner for Railways (s. 3). This Act provides that the commissioner is a body corporate and that for the purposes of any Act he shall be deemed a statutory body representing the Crown (s. 4 (1) (2)). He exercises the functions formerly exercised in respect of railways by the Transport Commission to whom the functions of the Railway Commissioners had been transferred by the Act No. 3, 1932, s. 9" [2] . (The Ministry of Transport Act).

[12]

We were referred by Mr. May to several New South Wales Acts, where the same expression occurs, passed before or about the same time as the dignity of representing the Crown was conferred upon the Commissioner for Railways. The earliest of these Acts in point of time is the Local Government Act 1919. There, s. 4 provides that "statutory body" or "statutory body representing the Crown" includes certain bodies (amongst them being the Railway Commissioners of New South Wales) and any public body proclaimed under this Act as a statutory body representing the Crown. The section also provides that "Crown" includes any statutory body representing the Crown, and that the Crown shall be deemed to be the owner of all lands vested in a statutory body representing the Crown. The Sydney Corporation Act 1932-1940, s. 2, provides that "statutory body representing the Crown" means any body defined by or proclaimed under the Local Government Act 1919, as amended by subsequent Acts, as a statutory body representing the Crown and that "Crown" includes any statutory body representing the Crown. The Rating (Exemption) Act 1931, ss. 5, 6 and 7, amends the Sydney Corporation Act 1902, the Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Act 1924-1930, and the Hunter District Water and Sewerage Act 1892-1928, by inserting definitions that "Crown" includes any statutory body representing the Crown. But in the case of each of these corporations amendments were also introduced to provide that "statutory body representing the Crown" means any body defined by or proclaimed under the Local Government Act 1919, as amended by subsequent Acts, as a statutory body representing the Crown. It may be that one purpose of enacting s. 4 (2) of the Transport (Division of Functions) Act was to make the Commissioner for Railways a statutory body representing the Crown for the purposes of these Acts since the corporation known as the Railway Commissioners of New South Wales referred to in the Local Government Act no longer existed. But this assumption, even if justified, would provide a very unsafe foothold for confining the words "any Act" in this sub-section to these particular Acts and to any other Acts, if there be any such, in which the same expression occurs, because any such Act might be expected to contain its own means of identifying the statutory bodies in question. The same provision occurs in s. 7 (2) of the Ministry of Transport Act 1932 which provided that for the purposes of any Act the Board of Commissioners (now defunct) should be deemed a statutory body representing the Crown, in ss. 5 (2) and 6 (2) of the Transport (Division of Functions) Act which placed the Commissioner for Road Transport and Tramways and the Commissioner for Main Roads in the same notional position, and in s. 3 (2) of the Transport and Highways Act 1950 which provided that for the purposes of any Act the New South Wales Transport and Highways Commission should be deemed a statutory body representing the Crown. The only inference it is safe to draw from the presence of the expression in the Acts to which we were referred is that the draftsman of the various Transport Acts must have thought that this collocation of words, as it appeared to have been successful to place certain statutory bodies in the same position as the Crown for the purposes of particular Acts, would provide a suitable verbal formula to place the Commissioner for Railways and the other transport authorities in that position for the purposes of every New South Wales Act. It may seem strange at first sight that Parliament, having gone thus far, did not go further and make the Commissioner for Railways a representative of the Crown for all purposes, but the only bodies upon which the legislature would be likely to confer the privileges and immunities of the Crown would be, presumably, bodies created by some statute to perform activities which the legislature considered to be of sufficient public importance to qualify as executive activities of the State. They are called statutory bodies because such bodies are created by statute. It is correct in this sense to describe the commissioner as a statutory body and it is for the legislature to decide to what extent he is to enjoy what Lord Cranworth in Mersey Docks & Harbour Board Trustees v. Cameron [1] described as "the shield of the Crown". The legislature has said that he is to do so "for the purposes of any Act". Probably it has gone thus far and no further because the duties, powers and functions of the commissioner are derived so largely from statutes. Common law rights and obligations must often arise during their exercise but the Crown in New South Wales can be sued both in contract and in tort, and the commissioner would receive little benefit from any wider protection. He would appear to receive substantially all the advantages which would accrue from representing the Crown by being placed in the same position as the Crown for the purposes of any Act and one of the principal advantages would appear to be his immunity from any Act which did not bind the Crown.

[14]

The only way a statutory body could represent the Crown would be to act as the agent or servant of the Crown and this must be the meaning of the word "represent" in this special provision. The representation is "for the purpose of any Act", so that for the purpose of any Act the Commissioner for Railways must be deemed to represent the Crown. One such Act would be the Government Railways Act, another would be the Landlord and Tenant Act 1899-1948, so that in granting the lease of 9th May 1949 under s. 18 of the former Act and subsequently in taking the proceedings under Pt. IV of the latter Act to recover possession of the premises the commissioner must be deemed to have been acting as the agent or servant of the Crown. But in neither of these transactions would the commissioner derive any particular benefit from this privilege. Reliance was placed by Mr. May on the fact that the proceedings in the court of petty sessions were brought by the agent of the commissioner and from this fact he sought to raise a contention that in these proceedings at least the commissioner in whom the fee simple of the land was vested and who was in law the reversioner must be taken to be acting as a principal. But there is the highest authority that a person or corporation may still be an agent or servant of the Crown although he or it and not the Crown is the person or body authorized by statute to sue or be sued, and that if such a person or body is sued he or it may set up the privileges and immunities of the Crown: Minister of Supply v. British Thomson-Houston Co. Ltd. [1] ; Minister of Health v. Bellotti [2] ; Tyne Improvement Commissioners v. Armement Anversois S/A (The Brabo) [3] . In the third of these cases the English legislation expressly provided that one of the defendants, the Minister for Supply, should have the same privileges as if the Crown were actually a party to the proceedings, but the British Iron & Steel Corporation Ltd., a British company, as an agent of the Crown, was nevertheless held to be entitled to claim the same privileges because of the general doctrine that, as Lord Simonds stated it: "inasmuch as the Act does not bind the Crown, it does not affect the right of its servants and agents, by whatever name the Act may choose to call them, to assert its and their immunity" [1] . Another such Act would be the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act and the commissioner must by virtue of the special provision be deemed to be a statutory body representing the Crown for the purposes of that Act. Accordingly in his transmogrified form the commissioner must qualify for inclusion in the term "The Crown in right of the State of New South Wales", the expression "the Crown" having the wide meaning given to it by Lord Uthwatt in the passage already cited [2] . But, even if the commissioner does not so qualify, the case for the appellant would not be advanced because the commissioner as representing the Crown could still rely on the general doctrine that the Crown is not bound by any statute except by express mention or necessary implication. The Crown is bound by necessary implication where it is manifest from the very terms of the statute that it was intended by the legislature that the Crown should be bound: Province of Bombay v. Municipal Corporation of Bombay [3] . No such manifest intention can be found in the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act. Section 5 of the Act indicates a contrary intention. But, without that section, there would be no necessary implication. Minister for Works (W.A.) v. Gulson [4] (the regulations there in question were the genesis of the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act 1948). Section 5 of the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act does, of course, expressly refer to the Crown and to the Housing Commission but the general doctrine would still prevail notwithstanding the insertion of an express exemption clause as to certain matters: Hornsey Urban Council v. Hennell [5] ; Gorton Local Board of Health v. Prison Commissioners [6] ; Tyne Improvement Commissioners Case [7] .

[16]

The appellant relied on Rural Bank of New South Wales v. Hayes [8] . But that case is clearly distinguishable. In the joint judgment it was pointed out [9] that the functions of the bank were not those of a department of the executive Government of New South Wales. Consequently it was not entitled to claim for itself, as being within the concept of the Crown, an immunity belonging to the Crown either under the common law or under statutory provision. A similar contention that the Grain Elevators Board (Vict.) was a branch of the Victorian Department of Agriculture, so that it was performing its functions, powers and duties as part of the executive Government of Victoria, failed in the Dunmunkle Case [10] . In the present case, quite apart from the special provision contained in s. 4 (2) of the Transport (Division of Functions) Act, the Commissioner for Railways is placed by the statutes that have been referred to in a completely different position to that of the Rural Bank because he is made by those provisions the very thing that the Rural Bank was not, that is to say he is made an integral part of a department which is one of the departments of the executive Government of New South Wales. It is impossible to deny the correctness of the statement by Latham C.J. in South Australia v. The Commonwealth [1] that "in a fully self-governing country where a parliament determines legislative policy and an executive government carries it out, any activity may become a function of government if parliament so determines" [2] . The railways of the States have been built and maintained with public moneys and their extension, upkeep and management have always been considered to be a function of government. In Young v. S.S. "Scotia" [3] a similar view of a railway owned by the Government of Canada was taken with respect to a rail ferry boat built to connect one part of the railway with another. As long ago as Farnell v. Bowman [4] the Privy Council said that "It must be borne in mind that the local Governments in the Colonies, as pioneers of improvements, are frequently obliged to embark in undertakings which in other countries are left to private enterprise, such, for instance, as the construction of railways, canals, and other works for the construction of which it is necessary to employ many inferior officers and workmen. If, therefore, the maxim that "the king can do no wrong" were applied to Colonial Governments in the way now contended for by the appellants, it would work much greater hardship than it does in England" [5] . The same view prevailed at the time the Constitution was being framed and we have in the Constitution itself provisions relating to the railways, namely s. 51, pars. (xxxii.), (xxxiii.) and (xxxiv.), particularly par. (xxxiii.), and ss. 98, 101, 102 and 104 which recognize that the railways are the property of the States. Any doubt that could have previously existed should, at any rate in New South Wales, have been set at rest when the Commissioner for Railways was made a branch of a department of State presided over and controlled by a responsible Minister of State. There is also nothing in the decision of the House of Lords in the Bank Voor Handel Case [6] that assists the appellant or, it may be said, assists either side for their Lordships were there dealing with an altogether different and somewhat unusual problem. But Lord Reid's speech contains several statements which indicate that the question whether a person or corporation is a servant of the Crown or not depends upon the degree of control the Crown, through its ministers, can exercise over him in the performance of his duties and the question is not the degree of independence he in fact enjoys but how much he can assert and insist on by reason of the terms of his appointment or the nature of his office. In the present case the control of the New South Wales Transport and Highways Commission and the Minister for Transport over the Commissioner for Railways is as complete as it can be. It is at least as complete as the power to control the custodian given to the Board of Trade by the Trading with the Enemy Act 1939 Imp., s. 7. The right of the Minister for Transport to represent the Crown in New South Wales is at least as clear as the right of the Board of Trade to represent the Crown in England (Halsbury's Laws of England, 3rd ed., vol. 7, p. 421).

[24]

In the affidavit relied upon by the appellant the ground of prohibition was described in a familiar form of words. It was said that "the Commissioner for Railways is not the Crown and is bound by the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act 1948-1952 ". It is, of course, quite common, where some immunity or advantage is claimed for an individual or a body by reference to a special position which the law accords to the Crown, to speak of the individual or body as being or not being the Crown. This use of language is open to the objection that not only is it for obvious reasons technically inexact but it tends to obscure the real nature of the problem. The Sovereign alone is the Crown. In this country, where questions concerning the Monarch personally can seldom arise, the Crown normally means the Sovereign considered as the central government of the Commonwealth or a State. Ordinarily, therefore, to hold that a given statutory provision binds the Crown is to hold that it operates to destroy or curtail or impair some interest or purpose (Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. v. Administrator of Hungarian Property [1] ) of the Sovereign as so considered. Where the immunity is claimed by a subject of the Crown, whether an individual or a corporation, the question to be decided, whatever may be the language in which for convenience it may be expressed, cannot really be whether the subject is within a class of departments, organizations and persons generically (and loosely) described as the Crown. It must always be whether the operation of the provision upon the subject would mean some impairment of the existing legal situation of the Sovereign. This I take to be conclusively shown by the speeches, both of the majority and of the minority, delivered in the House of Lords, and the judgments delivered in the Court of Appeal, in the case of Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. v. Administrator of Hungarian Property [2] . The question in that case was whether income received by a subject was immune from income tax imposed by an Act which did not bind the Crown. The subject concerned was a government official and he received the income in his official capacity. The income was required to be held by him during the war and until its destination should ultimately be determined by the Crown. There was a cleavage of judicial opinion on the question whether the taxing of the income would be such a prejudice to the Crown as to be inconsistent with the Crown's immunity from tax, bearing in mind that the income formed no part either of the personal revenue of the Sovereign or of the revenue applicable for the government of the country. But the point of general importance, upon which there was unanimity as I read the judgments, was that the decision must depend upon an ascertainment of the effect which the taxing of the income would have upon interests or purposes of the Sovereign. The nature of the relation between the official himself and the Crown - whether he was a servant, or an agent or occupied some other position - was considered only in the course and for the purpose of determining that crucial matter.

[32]

Now, the Commissioner for Railways is a corporation, suing in this case as a party principal to the litigation, and claiming to recover possession of land which is vested absolutely in him both at law and in equity. Unless, in the statutes which incorporate him and govern his corporate situation, there are provisions which require a contrary conclusion, the case cannot be distinguished in principle from that which we had to consider in Rural Bank of New South Wales v. Hayes [5] , where a statutory corporation was held to be bound by the very section in question here, s. 62 of the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act 1948-1949 N.S.W.. It was said in that case: "A corporate lessor which is not the Crown is bound by the Act; and it is nothing to the point that land of which the corporation is the lessor is held on behalf of the Government. It is a necessary consequence of the vesting of land in the corporation that the immunity of the Crown from the operation of the Act has no relevance in proceedings by the corporation to recover possession of the land" [1] . No doubt a corporate lessor found to be a bare trustee for the Crown, or found to have been placed by some statute in a position analogous to that of a bare trustee for the Crown, would be outside the contemplation of this passage, for what was there being referred to was a corporation having statutory functions to perform with respect to the land in question. Such a corporation could not be acting as a servant or agent of the Crown in suing to recover possession of the land, for the hypothesis is that it is suing by virtue of a title which confers the right to possession at law. A provision that the corporation shall hold the land on behalf of the Government - and the reference in the passage quoted was not to the possible existence of a trust but to s. 19 of the Government Savings Bank Amendment Act 1913-1945 N.S.W. which the Bank had contended had this effect - that fact cannot be to the point, because the possession, when recovered by the corporation, will be the corporation's own possession for the purposes of its Act, not the Crown's possession. The judgment went on to say: "This is clearly the position in the present case, because the appellant is given by s. 48A (3) (k) of the Government Savings Bank Act, 1906 (as amended by Act No. 38 of 1947) a power of leasing exercisable for the purpose of carrying on its general banking business, so that the appellant sues in this case as a lessor in its own right and not in any sense on behalf of the Crown" [1] . Fullagar J. made the same point when he said: "The rights which are not to be affected by the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act are rights of the Crown, and the rights asserted in these proceedings are not rights of the Crown" [2] .

[34]

The point which I regard the cases as insisting upon is that when one turns, as one must, to examine the special legislation under which a statutory corporation acts (in a case where there is no express extension of the relevant Crown immunity to the corporation), one does so for a precise purpose. It is not to ascertain whether there is in some vague sense an approximation of the corporation to a government department. The object in view is to ascertain whether the Crown has such an interest in that which would be interfered with if the provision in question were held to bind the corporation that the interference would be, for a legal reason, an interference with some right, interest, power, authority, privilege, immunity or purpose belonging or appertaining to the Crown. In the present case this means that the object of the examination must be to discover whether the recovery of possession with which the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act interferes if the Act binds the Commissioner for Railways, would be, in some legal sense, a recovery for the Crown. It cannot be so here because of any interest of the Crown in the land at common law or in equity, for it is not disputed that the entire fee simple, both at law and in equity, is in the Commissioner for Railways. Nor is it to be considered so by reason of the doctrine referred to in Mersey Docks v. Cameron [1] by which subjects of the Crown may be held exempt from the operation of statutes relating to property on the special ground that the property is devoted to purposes which are to be considered within the use and service of the Crown notwithstanding that the subjects concerned are not strictly servants or agents of the Crown. The purposes which attract that doctrine are such only as fall within the description given by Lord Blackburn in Coomber v. Justices of Berks. [2] when he spoke of "the purposes of the administration, or those purposes of the Government which are, according to the theory of the constitution, administered by the Sovereign" [3] . Lord Watson meant nothing different, I think, when he spoke of "the primary and inalienable functions of a constitutional Government" [4] . The description excludes many purposes which may be served by public authorities subject to varying forms and degrees of supervision, direction or control by individual ministers of the Crown or even by the Crown itself. It is not satisfied by the existence of a long-standing practice in a community to commit the task of serving a particular purpose to the hands of public departments or bodies, even though in that community the practice has been so widespread and has lasted so long that the function may be described as having become a "traditional" function of government there. No doubt it is true that in the history of this country most railways (though by no means all) have been run, by virtue of statutory authority, as (in a broad sense) State-owned enterprises, and that may enable them to be described as a governmental function in one sense; but the function "is not "strictly governmental" in the sense of being a function without which a civilized State cannot be conceived, a function with which the State cannot part": per Higgins J. in Amalgamated Society of Engineers v. Adelaide Steamship Co. Ltd. [5] . I entirely agree with the remark which Jordan C.J. made in Skinner v. Commissioner for Railways [6] founding himself upon what was said by Higgins J. in the words I have just quoted and by Isaacs and Rich JJ. in Federated Municipal & Shire Council Employees' Union of Australia v. Melbourne Corporation [1] : "a State railway is no more an inalienable function of government than a State brickworks" [2] .

[45]

Several considerations point to this construction. The limiting words, "for the purposes of any Act", suggest an intention to prescribe a hypothesis as a means rather of extending the application of statutory provisions, even if they be exempting provisions, than of supplying a ground for their non-application. Moreover, it is difficult, as Roper C.J. in Eq. in effect pointed out, to suppose that an extension of the Crown immunity from the operation of statutes could have been intended without an intention to give the commissioner the advantages enjoyed by agents of the Crown not only for the purposes of Acts but for all the purposes of the law. Then, too, s. 4 (2) does not provide that the commissioner shall be deemed to represent the Crown: he is to be deemed "a statutory body representing the Crown". The expression has about it the ring of a stereotyped formula used in statutes as a generic description of public bodies of a more or less fixed class which are repeatedly grouped with the Crown as a subject of legislation, that is to say as the subject of specific exempting provisions. This impression is strongly confirmed when one finds the very phrase occurring again and again in New South Wales statutes passed or amended in the last forty years: in s. 4 of the Local Government Act 1919; in s. 4 of the Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Act 1924-1954; in s. 2 of the Hunter District Water and Sewerage Act 1892-1928; in s. 3 of the Hunter District Water, Sewerage and Drainage Act 1938-1952; in s. 2 of the Sydney Corporation Act 1932-1940; in s. 2 of the Profiteering Prevention Act 1920; in s. 4 of the Moratorium Act 1932-1950; (with "statutory" omitted) in s. 2 (2) of the Gold Clauses (Construction) Act 1934; in s. 3 of the Broken Hill Water and Sewerage Act 1938-1951, and in s. 4 of the Drainage Act 1939-1940. The course followed in these Acts is to exempt from some of their provisions not only the Crown but also, by the title of statutory body (or bodies) representing the Crown, certain named public bodies and (in most cases) such other public bodies as may be added to the list by proclamations. The natural meaning of s. 4 (2) of the Transport (Division of Functions) Act appears to me to be that the commissioner shall have such exemptions as are thus provided for. So understood, it is far from being a provision attracting to the commissioner the immunity which the Crown enjoys from the application of all statutes which do not bind the Crown by express words or necessary implication or expressly exempt the Crown. Indeed it suggests a deliberate decision by the legislature, when concerning itself with the very question of the extent to which statutes shall bind the commissioner, not to extend to him the immunities of the Crown, but to grant him those immunities only which statutes specially allow to a limited class of bodies considered to be sufficiently governmental in character. It was obviously a possible course, though no doubt it might have had its disadvantages as well as its advantages, to provide that in all that he does, or even in a limited class of things wide enough to include holding land and exercising rights with respect to the possession of land, the commissioner should be deemed to be acting on behalf of the Crown, or, more directly, that for all purposes or all the purposes of statutes he should enjoy the Crown's immunities. But what is actually provided is something strikingly different. A clear intention appears to me to emerge that, except as regards Acts which specially exempt statutory bodies described as representing the Crown, the commissioner shall be subject, to the same extent as other people, to the laws which Parliament sees fit to make from time to time. And when Parliament came to enact the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act it did not exempt statutory bodies representing the Crown. It exempted only the Crown itself and one corporation, the Housing Commission of New South Wales.