And so the blame game began this afternoon for one of the Government's biggest failed promises this term.
Auckland light rail was meant to be under way by now. Instead, it's back to the drawing board, and not until after the election.
How has it come to this?
New Zealand First, which was never a fan of light rail, is partly to blame. It has been a fly in the ointment since before an unsolicited alternative proposal emerged in 2018 from the NZ Super Fund.
By cancelling the current process so close to the election, however, it should not be assumed that NZ First has had a clean policy "win".
Labour is making the best of a bad job and tacitly challenging Auckland voters to vote for the parties that will actually build light rail, rather than those that will stall it further. That means a vote for either Labour or the Greens.
NZ First's primary objection to light rail is to the technology itself. It favours heavy rail public transport and buses.
But an equally big red flag for NZ First - and some in the other parties of government - was the involvement of CDPQ Infra, the infrastructure firm building Montreal's light rail system and owned by the Quebec state pension scheme.
New Zealanders' instinctive suspicion of foreign investors created political barriers to a scheme that would be funded over a century through repayments not only to the New Zealand national pension scheme, but a Canadian one as well.
The upside was that New Zealand taxpayers would not contribute a cent. But fears about such a long-term boon for foreigners were easy to stir up.
The New Zealand Transport Agency, which assumed it had the job of building light rail in the bag before the appearance of the NZ Infra Canadian joint venture, was more than happy to thump that tub to ministers and anyone else who would listen as it fought to kill off the competing scheme. With today's Cabinet decision, half that battle is won. Now NZTA will seek to win the other half by ensuring it gets the work in the long run.
So, some blame for the latest delay rests with the bureaucracy.
For the National Party, the blame game is almost too easy. Today's decision offers yet another free hit at the hapless Transport and Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford, whose name is already forever attached to the political failure that is KiwiBuild.
The light rail is a similar political failure. Twyford carries the can for failing to deliver on another of Labour's biggest 2017 election promises.
Yet he cannot reasonably be blamed for taking the NZ Infra bid seriously.
Imagine if he'd dismissed not only the offer to build a multi-billion dollar piece of urban infrastructure at no cost to the Crown, but also a whole range of fresh thinking about how the light rail service could work to solve what had seemed an irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of the plan: to provide both a suburban commuter service and a quick, reliable way to get from central Auckland to the city's airport.
That conundrum remains unsolved. It is already the source of coalition tensions that are not only far less visible than the obvious ones above, but will re-emerge in the next phase of wrangling over its future, assuming re-election of a Labour-led government in September.
That is: what is Auckland light rail for?
For the Green Party, it is not just a way of offering better public transport. It's also a way of actively discouraging car use. Putting a light railway line down Dominion Rd will make driving a car there more difficult than the current mix of buses, bikes, and commercial vehicles.
That is no accident. A more difficult driving experience is a feature, not a bug of this conception of light rail. That system also has a lot of stops, meaning it prioritises the short journeys of local commuters over swift transport to either the city centre or the airport.
The NZ Infra proposal is quite different. It would be built above road level, separating rail and road traffic, would have fewer stops but more regular departures, and would get an airport customer from Queen's Wharf to the check-in at the airport in Mangere in just over half an hour.
Its supporters say it would still assist the Government's goal of more intensive urban redevelopment by encouraging denser housing and shopping around that smaller number of stops, with buses connecting commuters from surrounding areas.
When officials and politicians sit down to rethink light rail after the election, these divergent views of the light rail system's intent will still be as real as they are today, even if NZ First has less or no influence in a new government led by Jacinda Ardern.
Infrastructure NZ chief executive Paul Blair put it well in a statement following the decision.
"If two proposals were received which both achieved the objectives of the project, why was neither able to proceed? Will the next iteration suffer the same fate?"
