Auckland mayoral candidate John Palino is calling for the removal of the urban-rural boundary to improve housing affordability.
The boundary, known as the metropolitan urban limit, was restricting land supply in Auckland and driving up house prices for ideological reasons, Mr Palino said today.
"It is time council stopped flogging the dead horse that is the compact city and started releasing large amounts of land for residential development," he said.
It is Mr Palino's first policy announcement since he brushed aside any links to the Len Brown sex scandal at a combative mayoral launch two weeks ago.
The cafe operator, whose 2013 campaign became embroiled in the Mayor Brown, Bevan Chuang, Luigi Wewege love triangle, got peppered with questions about what he knew about the scandal and his links this time round to players in the book Dirty Politics.