inquiry into the rights, powers, privileges, immunities, duties, or
liabilities of any person" and "statutory power of decision" includes
power conferred by or under any Act "to make a decision ... affecting"
any such rights, powers, privileges, duties or liabilities. Generally
the relief available is confined by s. 4 to that which the applicant
would have been entitled to in any one or more of the proceedings for
mandamus, prohibition, certiorari, declaration or injunction; but there
is a relevant exception in s. 4 (2) whereby if the applicant is entitled
to an order declaring that a decision made in the exercise of a
statutory power of decision is unauthorized or otherwise invalid the
Court may set aside the decision instead.

The first question as to jurisdiction is therefore whether, apart from
the 1972 Act, the applicants could have obtained relief by any of the
proceedings mentioned. The Commission having ceased to exist, it would
be too late to apply for prohibition or an injunction against the first
respondent and mandamus would also be inappropriate. The decision of
this Court in _Reynolds_ v. _Attorney-General_ (1909) 29 N.Z.L.R. 24,
37-38, suggests that once the report has been forwarded to the
Governor-General it may be permanently beyond the reach of certiorari;
this is perhaps a corollary of the view, to which we referred in the
judgment concerning discovery in _Environmental Defence Society Inc._
v. _South Pacific Aluminium Limited_ (C.A. 59/81, judgment 15th June
1981), that a prerogative remedy may not lie against the Sovereign's
representative.

But we need not go further into the rather technical question of the
scope of certiorari in this kind of case. As has been said in the
_Environmental Defence Society_ case and _Ng_ v. _Minister of Immigration_
(C.A. 100/81, judgment 10th August 1981), a declaration may be granted