"What goes on in NSW is not an exercise in democracy, it's an exercise in puppetry," a Greens senator from Tasmania, Nick McKim told Four Corners.

"And the puppeteers are a small cabal of people who are not directly elected by the members, who believe in top-down command and control. They treat their members like mushrooms – they keep them in the dark and they feed them on bulls---."

The daughter of two members of the Communist Party, Senator Rhiannon has been accused of hurting the Greens' electoral popularity by putting more emphasis on opposing capitalism than pursuing environmental causes. This year she was excluded from meetings with the other Greens' federal MPs for defying their position on the Gonski school funding policy

The party polls about 10 per cent and is able to secure passage of government legislation in the Senate that is opposed by the Labor Party.

No vote over 50

Senator Rhiannon denied her partner, Geoff Ash, demanded that Mr Buckingham attack then Senator Brown, who was its first national leader and for a while its only federal MP.

Bob Brown, pictured with Senator Rhiannon in Sydney in 2011, has described her as a "wrecker". Michele Mossop

"So often, fabrications, misinformation," Senator Rhiannon told the show. "I have not talked to anyone like that. It's not my style of work. I'm deeply committed to being inclusive and so is my partner."


The show broadcast footage of a NSW Greens member joking about denying the vote to people over 50, which she says will lead to more progressive social policies. "Bob Brown should f--- off because he's over 50," the member, Aesha Hussain, says, citing a colleague's suggestion. "Couldn't agree more."

On the show Mr Brown criticised Senator Rhiannon, who he has long sparred with, and challenged comparisons with UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose firebrand left politics proved unexpectedly popular at the British general election on June 8.

"She's as much Jeremy Corbyn as I am Santa Claus," Mr Brown said. "I've been living with Lee for 30 years, but it's the end of Lee's reign. That end is nigh, and I look forward to the future."

Senator Rhiannon said she intended to stand for the party at the next election.