In politics, the good enough is the best you can usually hope for. On most policy questions, the best is irrelevant. What matters instead is what is best among currently possible options.

And so The New Zealand Initiative has joined its name to those of many others urging Auckland Council to pass the Unitary Plan.

In our policy reports and analyses, we worry both about what is best and about what could be politically feasible in time, if not now. Both are important. There is no point in a think tank that only proposes things that are currently politically feasible. The Ministries are filled with analysts making their best guesses as to what the Minister might support. A think tank’s job is working out what should be possible and showing the way there so that better solutions become good politics.

In the case of Auckland housing, The New Zealand Initiative has been an important part of shifting the conversation – along with others like Motu’s Arthur Grimes, and Demographia’s Hugh Pavletich.

Regulatory barriers to new construction, both up and out, underlie Auckland’s housing crisis. Easing those artificial barriers to new housing supply has to happen for Auckland to start slowly moving toward affordability. Five years ago, that conversation was not really politically feasible. Now it is generally accepted on both sides of the aisle in Parliament.

The plan, now back from the Independent Hearings Panel, is far from perfect. But it is better than what went before it. There are promising hints that Municipal Utility Districts could be built as satellite towns. Some barriers to densification, like blanket regulations making it hard to redevelop any house built prior to 1944, are gone. The plan can and should have gone further in allowing density in more places that people want to live, and in taking Phil Twyford’s advice to abolish the Rural-Urban Boundary.

But it is almost inconceivable that any revisiting of it by Council would improve things. It is more likely that restrictions on density would be re-imposed, or that everything built before 1977 would get protected heritage status.

There is still ample work to be done in striving for the best. We will continue to work on it, and look forward to seeing the Productivity Commission’s report too.

In the meantime, pass the plan.