There was much excitement in our house this morning after three-year-old Alice Mayne’s little green boom was pictured on page six of The Age.

How so? Well, 50 People Party candidates and supporters “stormed” Parliament House yesterday in defiance of a ban from the Labor speaker to give the steps a good clean with our mops, brooms and feather dusters.

There’s a more embarrassing photo in the online version but at least the coverage of our “cleaning up politics” launch got a good run, including about 15 seconds on the ABC TV news last night and a few seconds on Channel Nine.

My kids were chanting about People Power all afternoon as we belted out the following as the police politely tried to move us on:

What do we want? People Power

When do we want it? Now!

What are we doing? Cleaning up Politics

Why are we doing it? It’s dirty (followed by plenty of whooping and waving of mops and brooms)

Oh dear, you say. Yes, but this is politics and you need oxygen. We certainly got more than the Democrats which also launched at 11am yesterday.

I’ve even resorted to calling talkback and scored five minutes on ABC Melbourne with Jon Faine this morning broadening Ted Baillieu’s shares conflict problems into an issue about all those property developers that donate to Labor.

The focus for the rest of the week will be on finalising candidates before Thursday’s deadline and getting to the sharp end of preference deals which must be lodged by midday on Sunday.

We had a good preferences meeting with Democrats senator Lynn Allison yesterday and also caught up with Family First again on Friday afternoon. Some very tough decisions lie ahead.

This whole exercise is proving a much bigger commitment than first expected. A campaign office has been set up in the basement from which Crikey used to operate and the financial commitment is already pushing $15,000 before we’ve started on printed material.

Let’s hope the better half doesn’t find out about this or I’ll be in even more trouble for taking over the rumpus room.