And so the first week of election campaigning almost concludes, with both Gillard and Abbott finishing the week a little shaky after population, WorkChoices and the ghost of Kevin Rudd set the political agenda.

The commentariat remains collectively unimpressed. “Neither leader can be fully satisfied with their efforts in the first week. It is only week one, but already on the election obstacle course Tony Abbott has been singed as he tried to cremate WorkChoices, and Julia Gillard has found herself haunted by Kevin Rudd and Mark Latham,” says Michelle Grattan in The Age.

“Julia Gillard talks about “moving forward” but she’s not telling us in where exactly she wants to go. Tony Abbott says he will take “direct action” but his biggest promise so far is to do nothing,” laments Phillip Hudson in the Herald Sun.

Gillard’s population rhetoric is having an impact on our foreign relations, says Dennis Shahanan in The Oz. According to Shanahan, there’s been an “unwritten memo” between Australia and Indonesia ever since East Timor’s independence: if there is any new major policy affecting the region, Jakarta should be given a heads up.

“If Gillard feels entitled to appeal to a domestic argument on overcrowding in western Sydney by mixing asylum-seekers, East Timor-Indonesian relations, immigration and population targets, then why shouldn’t Jakarta feel entitled to reject her overtures of co-operation because of legitimate fears of creating a new target for people-smugglers in their own territory?” he writes.

Awkwardly, the Deputy Prime Minister of East Timor Mario Carrascalao claims that no plans have been made for a processing centre for asylum seekers in the country and the East Timor government doesn’t want it to happen — “A resolution against the processing centre was passed by the Parliament, and it was supported by all parties in the current Government. There is not one single minister in favour of that proposal.”

The boat people issue has Gillard and her team stressed, writes Dennis Atkins in The Courier-Mail: “To say the Labor campaign team in Pitt St sweats on these boats arriving is like saying Julia Gillard is moving forward — it just happens.”

And Gillard’s take on population isn’t winning her any friends from the conservative columnists’ corner either. “Julia Gillard is running the most dishonest election campaign we have seen in our lifetime,” argues Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun.

As the two main parties continue to war with each other, both continue to bleed votes to the Greens. Yes, both parties, says George Megalogenis in The Oz: “The standard political analysis is that it is Labor that is losing votes to the Greens. But this is the least revealing part of a decade-long trend. The Greens matter in 2010 because the Coalition, not Labor, has been losing ground in the youth belt since 2002.”

Perhaps that will help to encourage stronger climate policies from the major parties. “June 2010 — the final full month before Prime Minister Julia Gillard called the Australian Federal Election — was the hottest ever recorded worldwide and the 304th consecutive month with a combined global land and surface temperature above the 20th-century average. The message could not be clearer… All over the world, national governments are faced with the quandary of how to act on climate change in the absence of global agreement. And answering the question is not just a matter of the politics of left versus right,” writes David Ritter on The Drum.

In fact, today Gillard will announce her Citizens’ Assembly plan on climate change, where 150 randomly picked Australians will debate climate change evidence and explore the effects of an emissions trading scheme.

Not everyone is enraptured with the everyman approach. “Julia Gillard has put the pretty wrapping paper of conviction and consensus around Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading backdown. But inside it’s the same poll-driven backdown,” writes Lenore Taylor in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Kevin Rudd may no longer be the prime minister, but he’s still claiming his slice of headlines. Last night ABC News 24 broke the big news that Rudd used to send his chief-of-staff  in his place to attend National Security Committee of Cabinet meetings. The ABC reported, “…one senior official said that in his nearly 30 years of dealing with this committee and its earlier incarnations he could not remember a prime minister treating it with such disdain.” ALP colleagues say Rudd has to back Gillard publicly if he wants any hope of returning to the front bench, reports Phillip Coorey in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Abbott and Gillard took the day off of election campaigning to attend the funeral of Private Nathan Bewes, an Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan. It was a moment for quiet contemplation for Samantha Maiden in The Oz: “It was a timely reminder that good government, and indeed good journalism, are not always served by frenetic activity without reflection.”