Christopher Pyne – the MP who has been disciplined the most in 112 years of Australian parliamentary history – has criticised the opposition for “ungentlemanly” and “rude” conduct.

The leader of government business went on the attack after a torrid afternoon in the lower house on Wednesday, characterised by repeated Labor attempts to criticise the government over job losses, countered by multiple government motions to gag opposition speakers.

Pyne denied claims of hypocrisy given the Coalition’s behaviour in the previous parliament, arguing the lack of majority government was a “very unique beast” and asserting that Labor was “illegitimately elected”.

The house divided 14 times during the procedural tussle that began near the end of question time on Wednesday and continued during the speeches replying to the governor general’s opening speech to parliament last year.

Pyne said the Labor party “behaved in a very bad mannered and undergraduate way” by disrupting the address-in-reply speeches reflecting on Quentin Bryce’s speech last November.

“It’s a time when they can speak on any subject that they like for 20 minutes and the Labor party decided to disrupt that particular speech of several of my members, which is quite frankly just very, very rude,” Pyne told the ABC on Thursday.

“I like to think that while we were a robust opposition that held the government to account, and used the standing orders to do so, we never descended into the undergraduate and bad-mannered and ungentlemanly behaviour that Labor descended into yesterday.”

A review of disorder in the house from 1901 to 2013 shows Pyne is at the top of the list of members most disciplined, having been “sin-binned” 43 times and suspended twice. His rival tactician in the hung parliament, Labor’s Anthony Albanese, was next on the list with 30 sin-bin instances and four suspensions.

The 43rd parliament, from 2010 to 2013, was the most disorderly parliament, based on four measures including number of disciplinary actions against MPs and the number of days when more than four members were disciplined, according to the same research paper by the parliamentary library.

The LNP opposition frequently sought to suspend standing orders during question time to condemn the Gillard government. A separate research paper by the parliamentary library says the opposition used suspension motions 54 times during question time in the 43rd parliament, more than double the number used during question time in the previous parliament.

Pyne told reporters on Thursday that he had never moved a suspension motion that he did not think was justified. He said there was “a difference between holding the government to account and sheer rudeness” and Labor must “understand that they lost the election” and “stop trying to trash the shop”.

“I don’t think anybody ever accused me of rudeness,” Pyne said.

Asked about his own sin-bin record, Pyne told the ABC: “A hung parliament is a very unique beast in politics and of course we had more numbers, we had more votes than Labor in the last parliament, so we quite rightly felt that the last government was illegitimately elected by independents sitting in conservative seats and we wanted to hold them to account and we did so. That’s quite different to the bad-mannered way that Labor behaved yesterday.”

On Thursday, Labor’s leader of opposition business, Tony Burke, said the parliament descended into chaos the previous day but he would “not apologise to anyone for standing up for people who are losing their jobs”. Burke said the government had used its numbers to prevent debate about job losses.

“We’re not going to sit down and say, ‘Oh look, sorry that we’re here.’ We’re not going to say, ‘Oh, you’re the government, we won’t even raise our voices.’ If they think they can silence the Labor party when it comes to defending jobs, as they discovered yesterday, they’ve got another thing coming,” Burke told Sky News.

About 50 minutes into question time, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, sought to move a motion censuring the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and the treasurer, Joe Hockey, “for leading a job-destroying government which is intent on blaming employees and their negotiated employment conditions for the loss of their jobs”.

Pyne moved that Shorten be no longer heard – and the house divided along party lines to gag the opposition leader. When the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, sought to second the censure attempt, Pyne again shut down the speech.

Shortly after question time, the opposition was ready to debate a “matter of public importance” regarding the “failure of the government to take action to prevent imminent job losses across Australia”, but Pyne moved that the chamber move on to the business of the day.

Burke sought to condemn Pyne for shutting down debate on the jobs issue, saying there was no government legislation before the house, but Pyne again moved a gag motion. Pyne said the opposition needed to understand that the government decided the daily program and took seriously the address-in-reply to the governor general.

Labor tried to condemn the government again during the address-in-reply. The opposition attempted to move its own motions to gag government members, but was sure to fail due to its lack of numbers in the house.