Labour will claim both moral and tactical victories over National after this week's skirmishing over paid parental leave, and with some justification.
The weight of parliamentary, public and media opinion has all come down more heavily on Labour's side of the argument.
Labour looked flexible. It was willing to compromise. It looked inclusive.
In contrast, National looked inflexible, defensive and isolated.
Even so, Sue Moroney's private member's Bill extending paid parental leave from 14 to 26 weeks could yet give her Labour colleagues a political headache.
That is no reflection on Mrs Moroney.
Labour's women's affairs spokeswoman has given as good as she has got in her running argument with Finance Minister Bill English which was sparked by her measure making it on to the formal parliamentary agenda.
She has made the most of her Bill being pulled out of the hat in the pre-Easter ballot.
Whether that is ultimately Labour's good fortune is another matter.
The question Labour leader David Shearer must be asking himself is whether Labour is sending the right message to voters in pushing a measure of less than pressing urgency but one which will cost an additional $150 million a year.
If the political debate stays focused on the social benefits of paid parental leave, all well and good. If the debate becomes solely one of affordability, Labour has problems.
What has made things tricky for both National and Labour is that the Bill was drafted by Mrs Moroney back in 2009 when circumstances were different and seems to have been motivated in part to embarrass Pansy Wong, probably the least effective minister of women's affairs in the portfolio's history.
Had the Bill come up for debate in the last Parliament, National would have only needed Act's votes to block its progress.
Instead, the Bill languished for close to three years in the pool of private members' measures waiting for a Lotto-winning-like call-up.
In the interim, the Government's fiscal position deteriorated substantially, National now needs more than just Act's support to halt opposition measures, and Labour elected a new leader who will reverse the party's drift to the left and march it back to the centre.
Mr Shearer believes one reason Labour lost the last election was because its spending promises left voters unconvinced the party was capable of displaying fiscal restraint.
He reiterated that point in his first major speech as leader last month, saying any government he led was going to be "thrifty".
Now he finds himself with a $150-million-per-annum commitment slung around his neck - one that centrist-minded voters may take as a sign Labour has not changed.
Mr Shearer is obliged to back Mrs Moroney's Bill. It is Labour policy after all.
There is one compensating factor. Labour desperately needs to shore up its left flank from incursion by the Greens. Highlighting an extension of paid parental leave may well help to do that, if only temporarily.
The question is whether any gains Labour makes on its left flank outweigh any losses on its right flank. National's private polling is said to show voters are much averse to more Government borrowing and more debt.
Carefully avoiding attacking the concept of paid parental leave, Mr English has relentlessly sought to exploit Labour's fiscal vulnerability by citing Mrs Moroney's Bill as compelling evidence Labour is addicted to spending money the Government does not have.
Mrs Moroney has countered by arguing the extension to 26 weeks will be phased in over a three-year period, by which time, according to Mr English's own forecasts, the Government's books will be back in surplus.
She has accused National of being "undemocratic" in using the instrument known as the financial veto to block her Bill.
The latter charge cannot be sustained. The veto was introduced to ensure there was no opposition frustrating of a minority government's constitutional right to retain control over its Budget.
Without such a mechanism, effective government would be well nigh impossible.
According to Parliament's rules, a government can exercise the veto if it believes an opposition initiative or amendment to legislation would have "more than a minor impact" on its fiscal position.
The veto has been exercised 36 times since 1999, mainly to block opposition amendments to Bills.
The difference this time is that National is blocking a complete opposition Bill which looks certain to make it to select committee stage and which would quite possibly have made it into law with the help of the votes of National's allies, namely the Maori Party and Peter Dunne.
Mrs Moroney argues National is frustrating the "will of Parliament".
While the veto overrides any such notion, National's rapid resort to the mechanism looked heavy-handed, an attempt to stymie debate before it had really begun.
It was a response that said National was unwilling to consider any compromise.
National believes any concessions would not have squared with its its paramount priority of getting back into surplus as soon as possible.
To use the Beehive lingo, it had to "manage expectations" before they got out of hand.
National may now try to convince its allies not to support the Bill's introduction on the grounds that it is a dead duck and that it makes no sense wasting parliamentary time debating it.
That may be a forlorn hope.
National should instead take the obvious message from this episode: that when it comes to passing or blocking legislation, it is now more of a minority government than it really likes to admit.
John Armstrong is The New Zealand Herald political correspondent.
