Politics has, largely, been pushed to the side. But with the October 17 poll fewer than 30 days away, it's finally starting to feel like an election is on the horizon.

The Canberra Times looks back at what grabbed the headlines - and some quirky news which didn't - in the first week of the campaign.

For at least 24 hours, it appeared the ACT was on track for another election debated and potentially decided on the merits of that city-shaping and city-dividing project - light rail.

Liberal Candice Burch's declaration at an online election forum on Tuesday night that Belconnen, rather than Woden, might be the better destination for the network's second stage set the wheels in motion.

Labor quickly dusted off and rolled out their old lines about Alistair Coe and his carriage-load of anti-tram Liberals. Labor leader Andrew Barr even described his political adversary as "Dr No".

Burch and Coe stood firm on Wednesday amid a fierce backlash. But it wouldn't last. The Opposition leader took to the airwaves to perform a routine of political gymnastics on Thursday morning, declaring that the second leg of light rail would be to Woden.

An overall messy routine with a decent dismount. Score? 4.5/10.

One suspects there were a few terse and frantic conversations between Liberal strategists throughout Wednesday as they scrambled to douse the flames. The Liberals cannot afford to put the Wodenites offside - their chances of ending 19 years in opposition depend on it.

The Liberals weren't the only party to be ridiculed over their plans for light rail. The Greens, the self-professed architects of Canberra's light-rail network, pitched a plan for every second peak-hour service to run as a express.

How exactly would that not lead to traffic chaos without the costly exercise of building another set of tracks?

(Clue: It wouldn't).

"Andrew Barr once told my wife that he had no problem adopting another party's policies if they were good policies".

So said former Liberal liberal and now Belco Party convener Bill Stefaniak at the start of a press release this week, which went on to list policies - including cheaper car registration and kids sports vouchers - he claimed Alistair Coe's team had "copied" from the upstarts at Lake Ginninderra.

That the Liberals and Belco Party appear to the singing from the same hymn sheet shouldn't surprise anyone with at least a passing interest in ACT politics. Lead candidate Alan Tutt tried and failed to secure a spot on the Liberals' Ginninderra ticket for this election, while another Belco Party candidate, Vijay Dubey, was endorsed for the Liberals in Kurrajong before he was effectively pushed off the ticket.

Of course, it's not just the Liberals who are pinching policies.

On Sunday, the Liberals promised to build a hydrotherapy pool in Canberra's south. On Tuesday, Labor promised ... a hydrotherapy pool in Canberra's south.

On August 19, the Liberals promised a $15 million boost to school maintenance amid concerns about lead contamination on campuses. On September 18, Labor promised ... $15 million to remove hazardous material at schools.

After weeks of dodging questions about how the Liberals are going to fund their government revenue-sapping policies, Alistair Coe has this week finally settled on an explanation.

Sort of.

While there is still almost no detail, Coe has declared that he intends to lure "Canberra refugees", particular those living in NSW border towns, back to the ACT with promises of cheaper housing and a more affordable cost of living.

Coe is banking on the money those new residents spend on housing, rates and taxes being enough to cover the revenue hole created by the Liberals' policies, such as their four-year residential rates freeze.

The local Canberra press pack - that which doggedly follows messers Barr, Coe and Rattenbury rather than Morrison, Albanese and McCormack - is relatively small. There are usually three, maybe four (but never more), cameras set up to cover each press conference.

So when just one extra camera is set up, the local reporters take notice. When that cameraman happens to be a staffer member of Andrew Barr, and he's filming an Alistair Coe press conference, the local reporters really take notice.

It appears Labor was keen to capture their own footage of Coe so they didn't have to resort to using material from one of the television networks for their attack ads.

Elections campaigns are frantic times for politicians, so perhaps you could forgive them for occasionally messing up their lines or forgetting what policies their party had, or hadn't yet, announced.

Attorney-General Gordon Ramsay was guilty of the latter earlier this week, when he cheerfully informed an online election forum that Chief Minister Andrew Barr had already announced a re-elected Labor government would create a Minister for Business.

Barr had announced nothing of the sort.

Luckily for Ramsay, Labor was planning to make the commitment and Barr confirmed the move when contacted by The Canberra Times.