The Sketch: hold your horses, G-G, you’re pulling the wrong rein

Governor-General Peter Cosgrove shakes Bill Shorten’s hand. Picture Kym Smith

It was not so much the non-handshake that shook the world as the missed mitt that ruffled social media when, like ships passing in the morning, Governor-General Peter Cosgrove’s hand slid past Tanya Plibersek’s.

She’d been waiting next to Bill Shorten with hand extended during the G-G’s round of goodbyes from the Senate into which he’d briefly, ceremonially popped. He duly pressed Shorten’s flesh, but the member for Sydney — standing centimetres away — was left empty-handed.

Plibersek turned to her colleagues with a shrug of the eyebrows. “Know your place!” one called. After all, the argument soon went, Cosgrove had shaken hands with the Deputy PM, why not the Deputy Opposition Leader? It provided a surprise stir during the reopening of parliament, an event in which the most remarkable quality was meant to be how well everyone disguised their annoyance at being back in Canberra.

Things had seemed so much more enthusiastic earlier.

Before the G-G’s arrival, Senate President Stephen Parry had noted his receipt of Joe Bullock’s resignation letter. Somewhere among Bullock’s erstwhile ­colleagues on the Labor benches, a solitary “good” did softly sound. And then it was showtime. A lumbering bear of a man to whom actual bears might look for inspiration, Cosgrove settled into the president’s chair like a bloke ready to announce the military junta that’s going to sort out this shambles, then brought his commanding voice to bear: “Hon­ourable senators please be seated”.

Everyone sat emphatically.

Then the other mob lobbed. Led by the Serjeant-at-Arms, her frilly white jabot stirring memories of Peter Slipper, the denizens of the House of Representatives flooded in, filling rows of seats and squishing alongside their upper house colleagues. “So, this is the Senate?” mused government whip Ewen Jones. “Bit weird … but ­pretty.”

Even the freshly defeated Bronwyn Bishop, her jacket as ­orange as the casing on a black box flight recorder, looked chipper.

Cosgrove outlined the Prime Minister’s reasons for recalling parliament. This was as expected, but it didn’t crank Stephen Conroy’s tractor. Several decibels north of a stage whisper, he grumbled, “What an embarrassment for democracy.”

It was a line of thought he pursued later, suggesting the G-G had demeaned his office.

Back on the handshake front, the G-G, who’d been following protocol as to whose mitts he gripped, rang Plibersek to apologise. She declared it a storm in a teacup. This left just one man with an unauthorised handshake. Barnaby Joyce brushed it aside as you’d expect: “He was a bloke coming towards me with a smile on his face.”