Independent MP Tony Windsor says he is very disappointed Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is walking away from an agreement on giving the speaker pairing rights.

The agreement, thrashed out by the two major parties and the independents in the aftermath of the federal election, would have made sure the speaker's side of politics was not disadvantaged by donating a member to sit in the speaker's chair.

It is now likely the Government will be forced to nominate a Labor speaker, which will reduce its majority from two to just one vote in the House of Representatives.

It means even a single absence from the Government's ranks could lead to defeat on the chamber floor.

Labor does have another option, but it is a long shot. It will try and lure a renegade Coalition MP to accept the speaker's job.

Yesterday Mr Abbott confirmed that he was walking away from the agreement, saying the deal was unconstitutional.

"I support parliamentary reform. I continue to adhere to every aspect of the agreement, except the pairing arrangement, which we now know is fundamentally unsound and just simply cannot proceed," he said.

"The Government should have done its homework. The Government fundamentally failed to do its homework.

"It was only after the Government's recommendation in the agreement about the pairing of the speaker was concluded that the Government then did belatedly seek the Solicitor-General's advice and the advice is that this can be no more than an informal arrangement at best."

But Mr Windsor says that is a blatant excuse for the Opposition Leader going back on his word, and described Mr Abbott's action as a breach of trust.

"A lot of what we were trying to do as independents during that period after the election was assess whether anybody really wanted to be in government in a hung Parliament, and whether they could be trusted to be there for the period of the Parliament," he said.

"I think Tony Abbott has just reinforced our decision that he couldn't be trusted.

"I actually gained a much higher personal regard for him during that period of a fortnight and I thought he was serious about some of the things that he was saying to us privately and publicly.

"To say that this is against the Constitution I think anybody would say that's just a blatant excuse for going back on your word."

Prime Minister Julia Gillard earlier attacked Mr Abbott for "breaking his word" as the two failed to break the impasse.

Greens leader Bob Brown says Mr Abbott's decision is part of a deliberate plan to wreck the Government.

"He's on a real program of trying to wreck the way in which Parliament works," he said.

"It won't work; it's simply going to offend people who have a sense of fair play."

The man who negotiated the agreement on parliamentary reform for the Labor Party, Manager of Government Business Anthony Albanese, describes Mr Abbott's argument as "furphy".

"What we have here is an Opposition ripping up conventions, ripping up an agreement that they voluntarily entered into for parliamentary reform just weeks ago," he said.

"Every single arrangement for pairing, including every pair in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, is voluntary. Of course that's the case.

"That's what the legal opinion says, and the legal opinion also makes it very clear; not just from the current Solicitor-General, but the solicitor-general from the Howard government also says that there is no constitutional issue here."

Mr Albanese is adamant that there would have been no legal problems had the agreement gone ahead.

"The basis of the agreement was that no side of politics should be disadvantaged by who is made Speaker and who is made Deputy Speaker; this is very simple this issue," he said.

"The Opposition have tried to make it complex, raised furphies. The Solicitor-General's advice blows that out of the water once and for all.

"This is simply about Tony Abbott being an opportunist; going from a position whereby he was arguing the Parliament should be a gentler place, where there was more cooperation to showing for all of Australia to see, that he's actually not interested in a constructive, engagement in the national interest in the way that the Parliament conducts itself."

But Mr Albanese is tight-lipped when it comes to the Government's nomination of a Speaker when Parliament sits on Tuesday.

"We'll make our announcements at an appropriate time and it's up to the Prime Minister to speak on behalf of the Labor Party on those issues," he said.

"I'm very confident that there will be a Speaker chosen next Tuesday on the first day of Parliament as has occurred between Federation and the current time.

"I'm not going to go into discussions that I've had or that anyone else has had. What we know is we had arrangements just hours ago and Tony Abbott ripped up those arrangements."