What's a handshake worth in Canberra?

An extended game of cat and mouse begins in Canberra today. Tony Abbott is the cat.

The leader of the opposition yesterday told both Labor and a meeting of Coalition MPs that his hard-line stance on the pairing of the Speaker would extend to all pairings – effectively confining Labor MPs to within sprinting distance of the House of Representatives during sitting days.

Any requests for a pairings would be tightly scrutinised, including those from Prime Minister Gillard – who by parliamentary tradition would have expected to be afforded a pair automatically. This will severely restrict her ability to travel. The Australian reports that on Abbott's watch, Gillard cannot expect to be excused from voting "unless she could demonstrate her proposed trips or meetings were in the national interest".

While this makes life difficult for Gillard, with some tricky rescheduling it will not prevent her travelling interstate or overseas outside the 20 sitting weeks each year.

Nor should it stop key ministers travelling – but Abbott has effectively said that he'll decide when it's appropriate.

The newly named chief government whip, former Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, responded to Abbott's tough stance by telling the ABC: "I simply expect the opposition to be reasonable - surely they will agree that overseas travel on the part of the Trade Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Defence Minister, are crucial to the nation's interests and therefore will cooperate on those issues."

All rather annoying for team Gillard, but not unworkable. The real game of cat and mouse will be played out by the two chief whips. The chief opposition whip, member for Leichhardt Warren Entsch, has already said pairs would be offered "in situations like pregnancy, genuine illness, bereavement or family issues", according to the Sunday Age.

That's big of them. Tanya Plibersek upset Entsch last week by saying that while she'll be granted leave to give birth, she was "anxious" that other women might not find it so easy. Entsch hit back saying she was "using her pregnancy to drive a political point".

All of which shows how uncompromising this session of Parliament will be. However, even where pairs are granted, Fitzgibbon will need to be on guard, as an extraordinary historical precedent from his own side of politics demonstrates.

Way back in 1970, the coalition government of John Gorton was showing signs of self-destructing. The Gough Whitlam-led opposition had reduced the government's majority at the October 1969 poll from 39 seats to just seven. To paraphrase Whitlam, the opposition must have thought "it's almost time".

Gorton has a considerable number of enemies within his own ranks, who ultimately put his leadership to the vote and replaced him with Billy McMahon.

However, in early 1970, with Gorton still PM, Whitlam smelled blood in the water when a handful of coalition MPs decided to cross the floor over after a heated debate on the Seas and Submerged Lands Act, in which state and Commonwealth rights were colliding over offshore oil and gas exploration.

When the Labor party saw the government thus divided against itself, recalls former Whitlam and Hawke era minister Barry Cohen, "all pairings were off".

Labor broke its agreements and rushed as many members – including supposedly paired members – to the House.

Cohen recalls that they would have defeated that controversial bill and started the disintegration of the government there and then, had members of the Labor opposition not wasted so many hours speaking passionately on the bill, giving Gorton enough time to hurry enough bodies in from out of town to win the vote.

Could this happen again? Forty years on, Tony Abbott's tooth-and-nail approach to destabilising the lower house suggests it could. The handshake deals Joel Fitzgibbon and Warren Entsch enter into could well, in the heat of battle, be forgotten as Cat Abbott feeds on Labor mice.