The party's housing spokesman was in Dunedin this week to promote his member's bill designed to guarantee everyone can live in a warm, healthy home.
He also talked to students about the substandard housing they lived in, documented some cases of mould and rot on a tour, and spent the night on a Great King St flat's couch.
After living in rental accommodation for 10 years and only recently finishing his tertiary studies, Mr Hughes was familiar with having to pile on layers of clothing and use the oven for heating.
His overnight experience required a sleeping bag and three duvets for when the temperature got down to 3degC, but he "survived''.
"Like most other Kiwis, I don't think I've ever lived in a warm house,'' he said.
Mr Hughes' bill focused on rental accommodation because it was among the coldest and most inefficient of New Zealand's housing stock, and less than 10% of the Government's Warm Up New Zealand grants had been accessed by landlords.
"We know that there are a lot of cold, damp rentals out there and that lots of people have to live in them because they don't have the money to move.''
In order to change the situation he drafted a bill - the Energy Efficiency Conservation (Warm Healthy Rentals) Amendment act 2010.
It seeks to introduce minimum energy performance standards for residential rental accommodation, provide a legal framework which achieves efficiency and health gains for tenants and taxpayers, while enabling the capital investment to be reflected in the value of the property.
It would require performance standards to be in place by October 2012, all residential rental accommodation to be efficiency rated and publicly notified by 2015 (possibly in a certification scheme), and for all properties to meet minimum efficiency standards by 2018.
In order to enforce these, Mr Hughes wants non-compliance to be an offence which could incur fines up to $10,000.
He expected the cost to landlords to retro-fit their properties to be between $500 and $2000. In order to avoid rent increases for tenants, he hoped the Government would extend the home insulation grant scheme and improve access to low interest loans.
If the bill went through, it would enhance people's health, which would have flow on effects in their productivity, and lower emissions from energy production.
"It's a pretty small bill, but it would make some pretty big fundamental changes to the rental sector.''
It will be entered in the next ballot in August.
