This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The New South Wales Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham has labelled his own party “corrupt and rotten” after he was formally asked to step aside as a candidate for the state election in March.

After a fraught day at the party’s state delegate council on Saturday, a motion calling on Buckingham to remove himself from the party’s ticket eventually passed after two earlier attempts failed to reach the required 75% of votes.

The third, slightly watered down, motion called for Buckingham to step aside as a candidate, while thanking him “for his extensive and outstanding campaign work against coal and coal seam gas, and for a sustainable Murray-Darling Basin in NSW”.

It said the council “believes that if Jeremy Buckingham remains on the ticket for the 2019 NSW election, the Greens NSW will not be able to campaign effectively on the issues which we all know are so urgent.”

The party has been gripped by an escalating factional war since Greens MP Jenny Leong used NSW parliament to accuse Buckingham of committing an “act of sexual violence” against party aide Ella Buckland in 2011.

However an independent investigation was unable to substantiate Buckland’s claims and Buckingham strenuously denies them. Leong’s speech under parliamentary privilege has caused a deep rift within the party and led to open hostilities within the NSW branch of the party, leading to Saturday’s motion.

On Saturday, Buckland said she hoped the vote sent a clear message to the NSW Greens about the treatment of women, the handling of complaints, and the way it has treated her personally. “I lost faith in the party six years ago,” Buckland told Guardian Australia. “Now, it seems 75% of the members of the Greens NSW have lost faith in Jeremy Buckingham.”

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Buckingham had earlier managed to stare down two motions calling for him to vacate his position on the party’s ticket.

In a statement following the vote Buckingham called his own party “corrupt and rotten”, and accused the party of rewarding “bullying behaviour and the lynch mob”.

“It’s a sad and disappointing day for the NSW Greens,” he said. “While there are plenty of great people in the Greens and I have poured my heart and soul into the Greens for nearly 16 years, the fact is that the NSW Greens as an organisation is corrupt and rotten.

“Today the State Delegates Council of the NSW Greens abandoned grassroots democracy by overturning a democratic preselection result.

“They also threw justice under the bus by abandoning their own policies and due process to reward bullying behaviour and the lynch mob. This was a key test of principles for the NSW Greens and it has unfortunately failed that test.”

The original motion put to the council had stated the party had “lost confidence” in Buckingham, but it failed to reach the required 75% threshold.

Buckingham had earlier released a statement accusing factional opponents within the party of running a “diabolical smear campaign” against him and stating that the push against him had failed.

“This is the third state delegates council meeting in a row where my factional opponents have tried but failed to kick me off the ticket and overturn a democratic preselection,” he said. “There has been a concerted and diabolical smear campaign against me and I thank all the Greens members who have stood up for the principles of democracy and justice today.”

However, on the third attempt the motion passed, along with a commitment to an independent review of the party’s “capacity to deal with and respond to issues relating to harassment, bullying and the loss of trust and goodwill”.

While the motion calls for Buckingham to step aside, it was unclear on Saturday whether the party’s constitution included recourse for him to be forcibly removed.

Buckingham has previously faced calls to resign from the party’s federal leader, Richard Di Natalie, and Senator Mehreen Faruqi following Leong’s speech.

But other Greens MPs came to his defence. NSW upper house MP Cate Faehrmann accused Leong of using Buckland’s complaint “as a political weapon”.

Buckingham had already faced a likely election loss after he was pushed to third on the party’s upper house ticket for the election in March, behind incumbent MP David Shoebridge and Abigail Boyd.