The link looks to be gone for a start. Design work on lowering Parkes Way will continue but the roadworks are put off for now. The point of this project, declared in its very name, was to provide easy pedestrian access to the lakeside, by lowering the arterial road and bringing development and smooth access over the top.

This was at the heart of the project, but as Ms Gallagher put it with remarkable casualness on the weekend, "We are going to have to take a break on that one."

So the link from city to lake is gone. The stadium is gone, at least for the next five years, which is essentially the same thing in politics.

The convention centre, dubbed the "Australia Forum", a landmark building that was to have essentially sat over Parkes Way towards the lake, providing the public link from the city to the lake, is gone too, despite the urgency in business and tourism circles for a new convention centre. Ms Gallagher flagged upgrading the existing convention centre instead.

The lakefront swimming pool and quarantined in-lake swimming area may yet go ahead, with Ms Gallagher pointing out that the city swimming pool has reached the end of its life. And it needs to be replaced anyway, since the site is earmarked for the stadium, when and if it gets built.

So what else is left? Well, judging by what Ms Gallagher has said so far, the same that is always left from big projects forced to trim down - prime land to be sold to the private sector for new apartment, retail and other commercial development.

"In terms of City to Lake as an investment opportunity, we need to continue with that, because both [Deputy Chief Minister Andrew Barr] and I know from the different missions we have done, that is the single project that absolutely captures the imagination of investors," Ms Gallagher said on Sunday.

Which sounds very much like the development of the lakeside land off Commonwealth Avenue will continue. This is the area now occupied largely by car parking, the boat and bike hire. Also still on the agenda is the sell-off of the car park on Constitution Avenue that links through to Commonwealth Park.

If that is the way the government intends to proceed, it seems a deep corruption of vision - a shelving of the big-picture elements of the project, a shelving of the heart of the project to bury the influence of Parkes Way, in favour of a decision to sell prime lakefront land for more high rises.