Two resurrections in one week are hard to get your head around. In a stunning return from the wilderness, Kevin Rudd will open the batting for Australia in the first Ashes Test at Trent Bridge next month. Shane Watson becomes prime minister again and will lead Labor to the election.

Or whatever. We have endured the most turbulent week in Australian politics since the Whitlam dismissal in 1975. That now infamous photograph of Julia Gillard knitting was, I think, the last straw. Shot not at The Lodge but in a photographer's studio complete with wind machine to give her that elegantly tousled look, it was such an excruciating fake that it dismayed many of her admirers and exposed her to ridicule everywhere else.

And then her chief spin doctor, John ''457'' McTernan, publicly protested that there'd been ''a stitch-up''. You shake your head at such stupidity. Gillard's media management was a disaster from day one. It contributed hugely to her downfall.

But I think history will look kindly upon her. She leaves two great monuments in the Gonski education reforms and the revolution in care for the disabled. In the face of sexism and misogyny that was, at times, quite literally obscene, she carried herself with grace and courage. Painful though it must have been, she left office with dignity, and it is right to say that she will have made the way a little easier for any woman aspiring to the prime ministership in years to come.

The Tories, of course, are much alarmed. They know that Rudd will be hard to beat, and they will hurl the kitchen sink at him. Rupert Murdoch tweeted the word to his global minions early on Thursday morning: ''Australian public now totally disgusted with Labor Party wrecking country with it's [sic] sordid intrigues. Now for a quick election.'' We can confidently expect The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, the harlots of Holt Street, to step smartly into line.

Rudd's tenacity is extraordinary, unmatched in public life since the similarly discarded Robert Gordon Menzies clawed his way back to power in 1949. As with Menzies, the first test of his leadership will be to unite a brawling party behind him. Vengeance will not do it, and the signs are that he realises this. Such previously outspoken foes as Tony Burke, Tanya Plibersek and Gary Gray keep their seats in cabinet.

There is, after all, no rule requiring ministers to like their prime minister. Menzies, McMahon, Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Howard all had enemies in their own ranks. Rudd will not be much liked either, but if he demonstrates he is genuinely willing to consult cabinet and caucus, he will get that, um, fair shake of the sauce bottle.

It is an iron law of Australian politics that disunity is death. Labor has not weeks but days to get its act together.

With that out of the way, we can now look again at what the Tories have to offer. Twitter has been demanding this all week. Talk policy, talk policy.

As the 43rd Parliament crackled and fizzled to its end, the opposition was still obsessing about border protection. Tony Abbott and his immigration spokesman, the frightful Scott Morrison, see the swarms of asylum seekers turning up at Christmas Island as a huge political plus. Dog-whistling furiously to racism and xenophobia, they promise that only they can turn back the boats.

This is a blatant lie. Time and again, the navy has warned that sending these cockleshell craft back to Indonesia is far easier said than done. As we have seen before, the people smugglers will set fire to them or sink them, leaving the naval or Customs vessels to rescue the survivors from the water. Even if that does not happen, towing the boats to Indonesian waters is fraught with difficulty and danger.

Added to that is the Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, known as SOLAS. This is both international and Australian law. It requires mariners to save lives in peril and, equally significantly, not to place seafarers in danger. Navy commanding officers are obliged to obey this convention, no matter how loudly Abbott or Morrison might shout at them on a telephone from Canberra.

Most bizarre of all is Julie Bishop's assertion that she has some sort of secret deal with un-named Indonesian ministers to take the boats back. The Indonesian ambassador in Canberra and the country's Vice-President have stated clearly this is not on. Won't happen.

If Bishop ever gets her hands on the levers of foreign policy, Lord help us; she'll meet a learning curve like the north face of the Matterhorn. And the boats will keep coming.

The Tory claque has been all shouty, too, at the news that the independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor are quitting politics. The meme is that they are cutting and running, too cowardly to face the voters again.

This is absurd, but on a par with the abuse that has been hurled at them almost daily since they offered their support to the Gillard government in the hung parliament three years ago. They have been insulted and vilified endlessly by the opposition, the right-wing newspaper commentariat and the shock jocks.

I believe they have behaved with honour and integrity. Their stated aim was to bring stability to the Parliament, and they did so. Bravely, they held to the precept of that great Irish Whig Edmund Burke in his famous speech to his electors in Bristol in 1774: ''Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.''

Windsor, in particular, had a better than even chance of keeping his seat of New England. It seems that a health problem has caused him to withdraw. That and the prospect of getting his life back.

But with him out of the way, that carpetbagging dope Barnaby Joyce will now have a clear run to the House of Representatives. If the Coalition gets government, we can be sure Joyce would scheme to topple his National party leader, Warren Truss, and become deputy prime minister under Abbott.

That is almost too awful to contemplate.

Mike Carlton