Federal leader Richard Di Natale sought to put the quell the divisions on Thursday, insisting the decision to suspend Senator Rhiannon was not a penalty, but procedural. Greens leader Richard di Natale faces the prospect of prolonged warfare with Lee Rhiannon. Credit:Eddie Jim "What we need to now is to sit down together as a party, to work through those issues and recognise that what happened with the most recent debate is potentially going to happen again and we have to have some structures in place to deal with it," he said. After a four-hour meeting on Wednesday, the federal party room voted to exclude Senator Rhiannon from party room "decisions on contentious government legislation" - including in her portfolios - until the NSW branch stops binding her to potentially conflicting positions. But Greens NSW quickly labelled the decision "unconstitutional", signalling there was little support for change. Senator Rhiannon said she disagreed with the party room's decision, which will be debated at a NSW State Delegate's Council meeting in a fortnight.

"Our party's constitution ensures members have a right ​to participate in decision making. That's the way we do things in NSW," she said. This week's furore was triggered after Senator Rhiannon campaigned against the government's "Gonski 2.0" education package, even as Senator Di Natale and education spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young were negotiating a deal with the government to get it passed. The disunity scuttled the plan and all nine of the NSW senator's federal colleagues co-signed a formal complaint against Senator Rhiannon to the national council. Sitting NSW Greens MP Justin Field predicted cool heads would ultimately prevail in his state and there would be some kind of compromise to defuse the tensions. "We have to be constructive players in the Australian Greens. We can't just wall ourselves off from the rest of the party," he told Fairfax Media. Greens lower house MP Adam Bandt was the only one of Senator Rhiannon's colleagues who voted to keep her in the party room.

"I deeply respect my colleagues and want the whole party room to work together, but I genuinely believe excluding people is not the right thing to do," he said. "I don't want to see Australia's only hope for progressive politics fighting in public. The more we talk about ourselves, the less we're talking about people and the planet." One senior NSW Green, who asked not to be named, said the controversy had only helped Senator Rhiannon. The party member believes a likely challenge later this year to Senator Rhiannon's pre-selection - which many see as a federal bid to find a "more compliant" candidate - is now doomed to fail. Loading "The outpouring of support for Lee has been huge. If the goal with all this was to get rid of Lee then it has failed catastrophically."



The hardline NSW faction Left Renewal, which backs Senator Rhiannon, said it was "dismayed" by the decision, which it said would "actively disenfranchise" NSW members.