What a feast for political commentators yesterday; a main serving of economy, added side dishes of sexual assault gaffes and paid parental leave and a tasty no interest rate rise for dessert.

“Female reporters blinked,” reported Kirsty Needham and Phillip Coorey, when Abbott, questioned about debating Gillard again, answered: “Are you suggesting to me that when it comes from Julia, no doesn’t mean no?… She’s surely not trying to say to us that ‘no doesn’t mean no’.”

“Was Mr Abbott’s appropriation of the phrase no more than a poor taste joke or, as one Labor source suggested, a campaign ”moment” akin to that of the then opposition leader, Alexander Downer, who quipped ”the things that batter” when referring to domestic violence policy,” asked Needham and Coorey in The Sydney Morning Herald.

It was a stupid slip for Abbott but “all that did happen was that Abbott made himself the story for the first time in several very disciplined months,” says David Penberthy in The Punch.

But for Gillard yesterday it was all about the economy, stupid and she was helped along by the Reserve Bank announcement holding off on a rise of interest rates, leaving the figure at 4.5%.

Expect the Gillard camp to squeeze every last drop out of this. Malcolm Farr — who was on the campaign love bus with Gillard yesterday — writes in The Daily Telegraph:

“On Tuesday, ask for her favorite colour and you would get a lecture on how many Australian jobs were protected during the global slump. Check the time with her and the reply would be an account of how interest rates were 2.25 per cent lower than at polling day, 2007.”

It’s being talked about, but only to help themselves, declares Lenore Taylor in The SMH. “Is it too much to hope that Real Julia and Real Tony have a debate about Australia’s real economy and not the airbrushed version each has created to suit their election script?”

Peter Hartcher is unimpressed by Abbott’s economic stance. “Tony Abbott is offering Australia a faith-based economics policy — because there’s such a lack of vital detail that it requires deep belief in Abbott and his team. And that’s hard, because none of the Coalition economics team has even one day’s experience managing a national economy,” he writes in The SMH.

Comparing the paid parental leave plans by the parties is like warring parents fighting over the family car, writes Tim Colebatch. “Our mum, Julia, wants a cheap second-hand one to just get us from A to B. But our dad, Tony, says he wants a decent car we will not be ashamed of being seen in. And now we have to vote for which one we want,” he says in The Age.

Right now Abbott is streets ahead, says Dennis Atkins. “Abbott needs to find a way to ease back in this race and pace himself. Taking up Gillard’s challenge for another debate might do that,” he writes in The Courier-Mail.

Michelle Grattan in The Age sounds a warning about the shameless debate mayhem: “If you are cynical about politicians, tune out of the debate about another debate. In the argy-bargy over whether there should be a second encounter, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are just responding according to how they see their interests. You can hardly blame them. But you’d think they’d be blushing.”

Abbott shouldn’t avoid the debate out of fear, says Mark Kenny at The Adelaide Advertiser:

“He thinks a fair/average performance by him or a stellar one by her would hand much-needed momentum to her flagging campaign. This is true. But it is a risk Mr Abbott, a skilled debater anyway, must be prepared to take if he wants to be prime minister.”

The latest Newspoll should have Gillard fretting, particularly in the marginals. “Labor could lose enough seats in NSW and Queensland alone to be turned out of office or left relying on independent MPs,” says Dennis Shanahan in The Oz.

It’s like the 2008 WA state election all over again for Chalpat Sonti at WAToday:

Labor – which should have strolled away with victory — went for a Liberals-in-power style campaign, offering itself up as a sensible economic manager, then tried to divert attention with trivial policy announcements such as closing the bar in Parliament, and a bit of muck-racking over the former Liberal leader Troy Buswell.

An unelected Premier, Alan Carpenter, and a few faceless — and ultimately useless — advisers who allowed themselves to be diverted by sideshows.

Meanwhile, the Liberals promised whatever Labor did (except for the bar) and ran a fantastically boring low-profile campaign, preferring not to stick their heads above the parapet and hoping nobody would notice.

Just like in WA, the unlikely is now seeming very possible. “The most pervasive and perhaps fatal perception in this election is that Tony Abbott is unelectable,” writes Paul Kelly in The Oz.