KEVIN Rudd is the best present Labor could give a Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Sure, Abbott still has a tougher fight to win the next election, although Rudd's familiar bungling has made that job easier than it seemed a week ago.

But Rudd's wild policy reversals since he snatched back the prime ministership have helped Abbott to now win the election after that, too. Does Labor realise Rudd is trashing its credibility on the very issues that would most test Abbott if he wins the election?

Abbott's two signature promises - to scrap the carbon tax and stop the boats - were the hardest to keep. To scrap the tax, Abbott would need to get legislation through Parliament. But the present Senate, with a Greens and Labor majority, stays until June 30 next year and there is only a small chance Abbott would have the numbers in the Senate after that.

He could not get rid of the tax quickly or easily without Labor giving in, or without calling a double dissolution election next year to ram through his legislation.

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Until then, his government would be too worried about voter backlash to act firmly to stop the economy sliding. It would have wallowed.

But Rudd has now declared (falsely) that he himself will "terminate" the carbon tax, in reality switching a year earlier to an emissions trading system with a lower price. In doing so, Rudd admits what Labor long denied - the tax is too high and is hurting voters.

How could Labor defend that tax now? Its credibility is shattered.

Same deal on boats. Abbott's promise to "stop the boats" in his first three years always seemed dodgy.

Too many are now coming and stopping them would take more toughness than the Senate, the courts and the media were likely to allow. But then came Rudd.

Desperate to fix a problem he caused by scrapping our tough border laws in 2008, Rudd promised something tougher than any politician before him.

All boat people as of last Friday would be sent to Papua New Guinea, he declared. None would ever settle in Australia.

With that, Rudd didn't just give Abbott the basis of a deal he himself could use in government. He also destroyed Labor's moral grandstanding.

As Opposition leader in 2006, Rudd preached that "the parable of the good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the Government's proposal to . . . rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches".

This same man now has Labor backing a Pacific Solution on steroids. Labor promises to send all boat people - mainly Muslim - to a poor, corrupt and violent country that bans homosexuality and unanimously passed a motion in Parliament to consider banning non-Christian faiths, too.

Could any Labor MP backing Rudd's plan today berate Abbott for being mean tomorrow to the "stranger in our midst"?

That Rudd's plan is already in tatters, less than a week later, will make Labor's objections to Abbott's plans seem even emptier.

Already more boat people - 355 - have arrived since Friday than there are beds left at the Manus detention centre, the one PNG facility ready to receive anyone.

Already another boat has sunk, with dozens feared dead.

Already PNG is suggesting there may be a cap to the boat people it accepts.

In other ways, too, Rudd has smoothed the way of a Prime Minister Abbott.

Abbott would have tried the trick of every new leader, claiming he'd found the books worse than he'd expected and had to cut deeper than he'd promised.

But Rudd is already doing that work for him as he distances himself from the Gillard years. He is already writing Abbott's post-election story of Labor having squandered the good times, leaving unexpected debts.

His Treasurer, Chris Bowen, admits export prices are "weaker than Budget forecasts" and Labor's years of "windfall" growth are over. He's scrabbling now for savings for an estimated $6 billion hole in the Budget delivered only two months ago.

Moreover, the one big "saving" Rudd has announced so far - to pay for his carbon tax change - has hit harder than he seems to have expected.

More than 320,000 Australians, many on middle incomes, are affected by his change to the fringe benefits taxes paid on company-supplied cars and dozens of people in the salary packaging business have been sacked.

Labor will struggle to be holier than thou about Abbott's spending cuts after the clumsy one it's just announced - and the ones still to come.

Rudd has clearly made Labor more competitive in this election. But he's made it less so the election after.