In the end, the deal to secure Malcolm Turnbull's signature election pledge of enterprise tax cuts, at least for small and medium businesses, was, to use the vernacular, a little "exxy".
The X-man of Australian politics, Nick Xenophon has once again proved himself the master-negotiator, and Turnbull, the great deal-maker and achiever of results.
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Turnbull's big win on tax cuts
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Turnbull's big win on tax cuts
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The government gets its company tax cuts through the Senate - and Malcolm Turnbull is claiming victory.
Tax cut D-day
The Government wants Senators to sit for as long as needed to pass its company tax cut legislation.
Big business was a bridge too far. As such, the cost to the budget is substantially less â around $20 billion rather than $48.2 billion over the first 10 years.
As in all compromises, neither party got all they wanted. But both will be happy.
A Labor insider summarised the multi-pronged deal as "report, review, inquiry, re-announcement of previous policy, call for proposals, one-off handout for pensioners".
It is true that most of what Xenophon extracted is in the realm of studies rather than material changes or final commitments, but given that little relates to business costs per se, these concessions are significant.
Xenophon, unlike his more ideological colleagues, deployed his numerical leverage with skill and purpose, achieving gains for his state.
That the government gave away so much speaks to its eagerness to get this done. Desperation might be more accurate. Partly this is economic but mostly it is political. Turnbull's ethos is it's better to get 50 per cent of something than 100 per cent of nothing.
The PM built his election around the enterprise tax cuts plan. Treasury modelling showed its growth impacts were modest: one percentage point of growth after 20 years - and that was for the full package, including the big end of town.
The growth dividend of this scaled-down version, where companies with turnover of $50 million will pay 27.5 cents, will therefore be even less transformative economy-wide.
Nonetheless, the psychological advance is significant as is the promise of a future tax cut for all businesses if that can eventually be legislated.
Turnbull's win is a major morale boost for a divided government lagging in the polls and drifting into final budget preparations.
For Labor, it presents a new problem â a $20 billion hole in the funds it has available to commit to other things.