In an awkward moment after the opening of parliament, deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek doesn't receive a handshake from Governor-General Peter Cosgrove.

IT WAS a vice-regal snub and a lack of chivalry from a knight to some when the Governor-General today declined to acknowledge deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek.

Sir Peter Cosgrove was in the Senate for the joint sitting required to reopen Parliament after it was shut down last Friday.

As he moved to the Opposition side of the table, Ms Plibersek stepped back to allow Sir Peter to shake the hand of her leader, Bill Shorten.

That greeting completed, she then move forward to offer her own hand to the Governor-General, but he grimly marched past her.

However, Sir Peter did find time to say hello to Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce.

A Labor colleague was heard to heckle sarcastically from the floor: “Tanya, know your place!”

Despite the apparent snub, Ms Plibersek told news.com.au: “I am completely relaxed.”

Sir Peter later called Ms Plibersek to apologise and make clear no offence was intended.

The exchange didn’t look good, but it wasn’t a vice-regal insult.

Protocol says Sir Peter has to shake the hands of the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Speaker, Tony Smith, and Opposition Leader, Mr Shorten.

Mr Joyce was too quick for the Governor-General to ignore.

A spokesman for Mr Shorten said Ms Plibersek was “not insulted or offended at all”.

Although there was no official requirement for him to interrupt his official duties with chats to politicians on the floor of the Senate, the Plibersek brush-off was widely noted and condemned as bad manners by some.

Sir Peter was there to deliver a heavily political official speech — written for him by the government — as the representative of the Queen. That was standard procedure for Her Majesty’s Australian fill-in.

It wasn’t a social occasion and the ceremony was important to the possible path of the country to a double dissolution election in July.