Paddy Manning: You might not know it, but the Greens have a right wing. Mind you, they deny it.

Jeremy Buckingham: But the idea…some people have put around this idea we are 'tree Tories', we are into the environment but we are socially conservative or we're economically rationalist neo-liberals. And that is just total and utter crap.

Paddy Manning: On the surface at least, it's not your typical left-right divide. It's city versus country Greens. It's idealistic versus pragmatic Greens.

Mostly it's about strategy: a split between those Greens who want to win seats in Parliament and those who want to do politics differently.

The divisions are sharpest in the NSW Greens, dominated by hard left senator Lee Rhiannon.

Lee Rhiannon: The essence of the tensions in the Greens at the moment is are the Greens a political party controlled by the members or are they a political party controlled by MPs?

Paddy Manning: Things have got so bad in NSW that Australian Greens founder and former leader Bob Brown has weighed in. He says Lee Rhiannon and her supporters have held back the party for too long.

Bob Brown: They tried, unsuccessfully in the end, to stop us having a leader. They tried to stop us having the party room rules we've got. They have been successful in preventing us having the sort of national office and database that other parties have had.

Paddy Manning: He calls them the old guard, and he's called on Lee Rhiannon to resign.

Bob Brown: They've been there since the 1980s when we saw a vote at a big getting-together conference in New South Wales to establish the Australian Greens. We saw that voted down. It's been blocking the growth of the National Greens as against the State Greens, all the way down the line.

Paddy Manning: That old guard includes co-convenor Hall Greenland, a founder of the NSW Greens, who is absolutely unapologetic about the state party's resistance.

Hall Greenland: In a world of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn and so on, I think it would be very foolish to put your money on the Greens becoming more pragmatic, more conservative, more like the mainstream parties. I don't think that will happen. Besides, it's a dead end. Why would we want to go down that route when more and more people are turning away from mainstream pragmatic major parties, conventional, conformist parties?

Paddy Manning: The worsening split in NSW threatens to derail the ambitions of the Greens in Canberra who are equally unapologetic about trying to take the party mainstream, and eventually into government.

I'm Paddy Manning and this is Background Briefing.

In May this year, a big tree fell in the NSW Greens.

Journalist: He was a tireless advocate for education and the environment. NSW Greens MP John Kaye has died of cancer. He was 60. Today all sides of politics remembered him as one of the true gentlemen of state parliament…

Paddy Manning: Kaye was a leading light on the left of the Greens in NSW, sometimes called the watermelon faction or the Eastern Bloc. An electrical engineer with a PhD in renewable energy from the University of California, Berkeley, Kaye had a brilliant policy mind. Hall Greenland:

Hall Greenland: It is a terrible blow to have lost John Kaye, as many of us thought John was the brightest person in the party, not just in NSW but in Australia.

Paddy Manning: Kaye was de facto leader of the Greens in the NSW parliament. The goal for him was not power but activism.

John Kaye [archival]: [singing] The people's flag is deepest red, it shrouded all our martyred dead…

Paddy Manning: That's John Kaye singing in a bloopers video recorded during his preselection campaign in 2014. He was running for a second term in the NSW Upper house. He had a few jokes up his sleeve.

John Kaye [archival]: Hi, I'm John Kaye [laughter]…parliament is an utter waste of time.

Paddy Manning: Kaye was a hard-working MP, but he didn't want the Greens to be an aspiring opposition party. In that same video, played at his memorial service, the jokes kept coming, but they had an edge

John Kaye [archival]: If you elect me I promise that I will do everything I can to undermine the right wing of my party.

Paddy Manning: He never got time. Only 11 months after he was re-elected to State parliament, John Kaye was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that would kill him within months. On his deathbed, John Kaye recorded a stirring final message to the Greens which was later replayed at his memorial service.

From the grave, John Kaye had a message for the left; keep resisting the Greens' push for power.

John Kaye [archival]: The critical thing…I want to say this and this is me exploiting my current situation so do forgive me, but the critical outcome for the Greens is to not be caught into parliamentarianism, to not be caught into the trappings of power. This isn't and never has been about changing government, that's what Labor, the Liberals and Nats do. This is about changing what people expect from government.

Paddy Manning: His widow Lynne Joselyn told Background Briefing that John Kaye did not believe the Greens should constantly focus on winning more seats

Lynne Joselyn: He realised that a constant quest for lower house seats, for example, and having that as a measure of success, would actually result in a conservatising influence on the Greens, and he didn't see that that was the role of the Greens. He saw that we had great policies and that those policies needed to be used, to be articulated in the press, and to influence the other parties, to nudge the other parties, to bring them further to the left, to bring them in line with the Greens' policies.

Paddy Manning: It's a very different vision than that of Bob Brown and Richard di Natale who want the Greens to ultimately replace the major parties, and it goes to the heart of the looming split in NSW.

Senator Lee Rhiannon shared Kaye's vision. A former communist, Rhiannon is one of the most tireless campaigners around. We caught up with her during the federal election, early one morning in Sydney's northwest.

Lee Rhiannon: It's all part of campaigning, not just about the election, and getting votes, but also about issues.

Paddy Manning: It's also freezing!

Lee Rhiannon: It is cold! It's a winter election. I can't remember a winter election, I think you have to go back to the late 1980s for one, and it's been taking its toll. I was out at Tamworth yesterday, at least the sun did shine. But particularly people on pre-polling, railway stations, doing this sort of work early in the morning, it's tough, but it shows the commitment.

Paddy Manning: Did you get out here at 6 o'clock on time this morning?

Lee Rhiannon: Yes!

Paddy Manning: Rhiannon may be a tireless campaigner but that didn't spare her from a demotion in a reshuffle ahead of the election, when Greens leader Richard di Natale stripped her of the education portfolio. The NSW Greens were furious, and threatened to withhold funding from the national election campaign.

NSW convenor Hall Greenland admits it was a low point.

Hall Greenland: Yeah, Lee Rhiannon had done an extraordinary job in defeating the attempt to deregulate university fees, and lo and behold we get news without any consultation, either with Lee let alone the party as a whole, that she had been stripped of her portfolio. It meant that our senator, the senator from the senior state in Australia, did not have a cabinet level portfolio. And so yeah, there were a lot of angry and disappointed and concerned people.

Paddy Manning: In the end they paid up—no state branch contributed more, Greenland says—but there was no love lost between the NSW and Australian Greens. The state party showed their displeasure in other ways. The Greens leader, Richard di Natale, was not even on the how-to-vote cards handed out by the Greens in NSW. Senator Rhiannon says we shouldn't read anything into it.

Why was the leader Richard Di Natale not put on your how-to-vote cards that you were handing out, and nor the number two senate candidate, Michael Osborne?

Lee Rhiannon: Personally I doubt that who appears on it has a big impact, but it certainly sends a message by the fact that you've been backgrounded about this and are now asking questions. It shows that there can be a perception there that needs to be addressed, so...

Paddy Manning: Well, I think my understanding is that it was actually a subject of pretty lively debate amongst Greens themselves as to should we have had our leader on our how-to-votes.

Lee Rhiannon: Well, I was intimately involved in the campaign, and the lively debate I think is colourful language for you.

Paddy Manning: Okay, but it wasn't linked to a bad feeling over the loss of the cabinet level portfolio late last year?

Lee Rhiannon: Who appeared on the how-to-vote cards has nothing to do with people being annoyed with anybody about anything. It's like a design decision that's taken, there is a rush going on in elections. But to read political intentions or criticisms into that is just really going too far.

Voice 1: I'm not sure who made this decision and why but I hope we don't make this mistake again.

Paddy Manning: The downright hostility between the NSW Greens and the Australian Greens is on full display in a secret discussion group on Facebook.

Voice 2: Richard is a Victorian Senator, why would we have him on our how-to-votes?

Voice 3: Because he's leader of the Greens, has a strong public profile and we want to win votes.

Voice 4: He is not the leader of the Greens.

Voice 5: We set our own policies, we don't need a leader.

Voice 6: He is the most popular Green. It's a PR no-brainer.

Paddy Manning: Rhiannon has since told Background Briefing it was a mistake to leave the leader off the how-to-votes.

With the death of John Kaye, the NSW Greens had to find a new MP to fill his seat in the Upper House. The first candidate to put up his hand was Justin Field.

Justin Field: G'day, I'm Justin Field, and I'm asking for your vote, to be the next Greens MP. The sad passing of Dr John Kaye left a casual vacancy in the NSW Upper House. I just missed out being elected at the last state election, and I'm putting myself forward again, to be your representative…

Paddy Manning: A former army officer based on the NSW South Coast, who describes himself as a libertarian, was the last person that many Greens on the left wanted in the job.

Voice 1: We need someone like John Kaye who has not sold their soul for a good job in the military.

Voice 2: You can be against war but personally I find putting down servicewomen and men pretty poor form and unnecessary. Do you even know Justin?

Voice 3: Justin who?

Voice 4: As a former soldier, I find it a bit harsh that one cannot be considered a good Green just because they have been in the services. I joined at 17 and I come from a military family and I don't think I sold my soul.

Paddy Manning: Justin Field joined in:

Justin Field: [Facebook post] I can understand the critique. I'm very critical of Australia's defence policy and the money going to defence industries myself. Possibly more informed by my military experience.

Paddy Manning: But there was more sniping. Someone even called Justin Field a 'careerist leech'.

Voice 1: 'Careerist leech'? Seriously? That kind of language is un-Greens.

Voice 2: Please keep your responses serious and genuine!

Voice 3: That horse (or leech) has already bolted.

Voice 4: It's a genuine reason why I won't be voting for some candidates.

Voice 5: When people talk about how this group can be unwelcoming for new members, this is the kind of thing they are talking about.

Voice 6: That's fair. I don't usually go after people. I guess you can't really blame them though: $840,000 and parliamentary entitlements and seven years stable employment is always going to bring it out in people.

Paddy Manning: The debate underlined that in a poorly-funded minor party that refuses corporate donations, these rare, well-paid parliamentary positions are a big prize.

A Melbourne cup field of 14 candidates put their hand up to take Kaye's seat. It was soon obvious that eight of them factionally aligned, preferencing each other in an effort to keep Field out.

The Field camp called foul.

Jeremy Buckingham: G'day everybody, Jeremy Buckingham here, just thought I'd take a little bit of time out to talk about democracy and how damaging factionalism and group voting tickets can be.

Paddy Manning: That's Jeremy Buckingham, north coast based leader of the so-called right faction or 'green Greens', a self-described bomb-thrower who is the most popular Greens MP in the state, and 4th-most popular Greens politician in the country, with 65,000 Facebook followers.

Jeremy Buckingham: Factional voting tickets are the antithesis of participatory democracy as they hand power to vested interests and entrench the power of established elites at the expense of diversity.

Paddy Manning: When Buckingham talks about 'vested interests' and 'established elites' here, he's not talking about big business or the major parties, he's talking about the left wing hierarchy of the NSW Greens.

Jeremy Buckingham: So, we must keep striving to clean up our democratic systems and for us all to be very mindful of factional preference harvesting and group voting tickets. Democracy must be a contest of merit and ideas, not of backroom deals. See ya.

Paddy Manning: Buckingham was treading carefully. He didn't mention Justin Field by name, to be sure he did not break the preselection rules which prohibit endorsements. That didn't stop Field's rivals from lodging an official complaint with the preselection disputes committee.

Phillipa Parsons: It was, in a word, unfair. There was one candidate in particular who just refused to play by the rules. Despite complaints from other candidates who were playing by the rules, this candidate just continued to flaunt the rules with no consideration and no sense of fairness.

Paddy Manning: That's Phillipa Parsons, a former Lake Macquarie councillor for the Greens who ran the preselection campaign for Field's main rival James Ryan. She says the complaint was only dismissed because the rules were too loosely-worded.

But there was plenty of precedent for endorsements, according to Justin Field.

Justin Field: The Greens have a principle that candidates should not seek endorsements, but over the last three or four pre-selections nearly all candidates have, including Senator Lee Rhiannon and Dr John Kaye in their last pre-selections.

Woman: The leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Richard di Natale.

[clapping, cheers]

Richard di Natale: I am so proud, just so proud to lead a party, and these people, this team, with the courage and the vision and the integrity to stand up for those things that matter to people right across the country. Good on you!

Paddy Manning: The federal election result was not good for the NSW Greens. Despite a great deal of build-up and (for the Greens) expensive campaigns, the party failed to pick up inner-city seats in Sydney, and went backwards in the senate.

A messy dispute with a former Greens staffer that flared up in the middle of the election campaign and is now before the Supreme Court, didn't help

Fed up, Bob Brown called for a clean-out on the ABC 7.30 Report.

Bob Brown: The incumbents in New South Wales—well, certainly that's Lee in the Senate—have given great service, but are not hitting a chord with the voters at the moment. And we need to move on.

Journalist: So Lee Rhiannon should step aside for new blood?

Bob Brown: Well, that would be my advice. I've been approached in the streets in Sydney and people saying, 'I'm a Green but I'm not going to vote for the candidates you put up here in Sydney.' Well that's not the feedback I get in Melbourne or elsewhere round the country, and we just need a change. And, you know, it's very hard once you've been involved working for years in a political movement to give up on it, but it's time that happened in NSW.

Paddy Manning: The Facebook discussion turned on Bob Brown.

Voice 1: Bob Brown has thrown down the gauntlet to the Greens NSW. He obviously wants to force through changes to turn the Greens into an electoral machine. I think he overestimates his cache among Greens NSW members. More than ever we need to assert our right to run this organisation as we see fit.

Voice 2: I think Lee Rhiannon is inspiring. I don't get Bob Brown's animosity. Bob's attitude and behaviour is NOT the Greens' way. Sad that he has taken this path. He WAS a good leader.

Voice 3: Bob Brown will always be a hero in my eyes.

Voice 4: I'm angry that a man who many of us looked up to thinks it's okay to rubbish NSW Greens and target one of our respected senators personally. It's beyond belief.

Voice 5: Why not suspend getting angry and start asking yourself questions as to why he might be doing it.

Voice 6: Seems to me though that there are plenty of people in NSW Greens who have a lot of venom for him, even before he did this.

Paddy Manning: That bad blood goes back to the very beginning. In 1986, when Bob Brown first tried to set up an Australian Greens party, it was blocked by NSW.

Bob Brown: In short, is that without the delaying and blocking of the growth of the Greens, we would now have 20 senators and half a dozen people in the Lower House. I'm referring there to the NSW Greens refusing and doing everything they could to stop the Australian Greens getting a leader. We'd still have none if it had been left to this small group from the NSW Greens.

They've been there since the 1980s when we saw a vote at a big getting-together conference in NSW to establish the Australian Greens. We saw that voted down. It's been blocking the growth of the National Greens as against the State Greens, all the way down the line. I think we'd be far further ahead if that blocking hadn't occurred.

Paddy Manning: Are you settling old scores then?

Bob Brown: No. I'm saying that I think the public has a right to know about it, and to know why I spoke out. I don't do that to settle old scores, I think that's a waste of time. I do it to reinvigorate the Greens, get rid of roadblocks, and have the Greens grow stronger, so that every progressive voter in NSW, and indeed around Australia, can feel like they've got candidates they want to vote for in the Greens, and the Greens go on to become the much stronger party that we should be.

Paddy Manning: That's not the way Senator Lee Rhiannon sees it.

There is a long history between Bob Brown and yourself.

Lee Rhiannon: Well, we've largely worked together, that's how I've endeavoured to do it. In some ways when he spoke on the 7:30 Report, while it was disappointing, he was really saying what he's said privately for a long time. When I've stood for pre-selection on two occasions, he urged that I not do that. I'm aware that Bob likes to get his preferred candidate up in pre-selection, and I wasn't that person. I understand that was something that was very disappointing to him. But I don't think it justifies having these public attacks on a colleague.

Paddy Manning: Is it a factional division, or how do you see the difference of opinion between yourself and Bob Brown and those people that support him within the Greens?

Lee Rhiannon: I don't see it…well, there is no formal factions…but there is an issue with regard to internal party democracy that somebody like Bob...and Bob really has had a long run where he was able to get agreement with what he wanted. It's often said, 'What Bob wanted, Bob got.' In NSW we had a well-functioning party, a growing party for ten years before we…over ten years actually…before we won our first seat in parliament. Through that time a very strong grassroots structure grew with members having a strong belief in grassroots democracy, and also having the right to vote in pre-selections for upper and lower houses.

Paddy Manning: In the early 2000s Lee Rhiannon argued Greens MPs should only stand for one term to stop career MPs exploiting the party. But since then she stood twice in the NSW parliament, and twice in the Senate.

You haven't changed your mind that the Greens should have limited tenure for its MPs?

Lee Rhiannon: The answer to that is yes, but one also needs to consider that people develop experience. I think the Greens NSW have come up with a good balance in terms of how that plays out.

Paddy Manning: And that balance is that it allows you to run for two terms not one in the senate, is that right?

Lee Rhiannon: Yes, that correct.

Paddy Manning: Rhiannon easily won preselection last year, with no real challenge from the right of the party. But in the recent federal election, voters had a different take. The Greens vote fell to 7% in NSW, well below the Victorian Greens vote of 11%. A decade ago, Victoria and NSW were level pegging. The real sting in the poll was what it cost the NSW Greens in forecast election funding.

The party thought they'd get a much higher vote. According to the state party's election review, obtained by Background Briefing, the disappointing performance left them $315,000 behind where they thought they'd be. That internal review also found constant conflict in the state campaign office, and a lack of coordination with the Greens leader Richard di Natale.

Overall it's not a pretty picture.

Lee Rhiannon: Now, being very honest about where we have failed or could have done better doesn't mean that overall there was a problem. That's certainly the case here.

Paddy Manning: One of the overall standout findings for me was where it shows that NSW now has a $315,000 deficit as to where it was expected to be after this election largely because of a shortfall in public funding from the Australian Electoral Commission. That speaks to a disappointing election result, doesn't it, in NSW?

Lee Rhiannon: As I said, look, we'd always like our vote to be better. What you're referring to there is that we make an assessment of what we think our vote will be. So, yes, we didn't get the returns that we had hoped, but that doesn't mean that it's been undemocratic or something wrong has been done.

Paddy Manning: But it's clear that there is something wrong.

According to Bob Brown, NSW voters want a different type of Greens candidate.

When you say the electorate wants candidates who are economically sound, what does that mean? Does that mean, for example, candidates who aren't socialist?

Bob Brown: No, I think the idea of having a more socially equal society is a good one. I think capitalism, as we know it, is a disaster. Growth capitalism and profiteering, as we see it around the world, is a terrible prescription which is non-sustainable. So no, I'm not opposed to the idea that people should have an equal go, but I'm also in favour of the free market.

Paddy Manning: So economically sound means pro-market?

Bob Brown: Let me give you an example of what I mean by 'soundness.' The 2014 budget was quite contentious. The Australian Greens were handling that and in fact led to some of the more obnoxious parts of that Abbott budget failing to get through the Parliament, as history shows. We had a group of NSW parliamentarians who were publicly campaigning for the Australian Greens to block the budget, to bring down a government that had been elected for less than a year, for what purpose? It would have been a disaster.

Paddy Manning: After Bob Brown intervened to call for a clean-out of the NSW division and weighed in on the preselection battle, the left of the party hit back. In an unusual intervention, John Kaye's widow Lynne Joselyn told the media that Kaye would not have supported Justin Field.

Voice 1: The Nasty Faction of NSW Greens (sometimes called the Eastern Bloc) has just jumped the shark.

Voice 2: It's sickening and completely unnecessary.

Voice 3: I am speechless...this is bitter venom channelled from the grave.

Voice 4: Totally disagree. This is a gutsy intervention, in the face of Bob Brown's recent disgraceful bullying of Lee Rhiannon. Clearly John's widow wants his grassroots, activist, pro working people legacy continued. Good on her.

Voice 5: Um, John and Lynne don't own that seat, the party does. We decide who replaces John, not him.

Paddy Manning: Justin Field himself has been more diplomatic.

Justin Field: Look, I was surprised. I wasn't in some ways as well. I would think that if John was still around he would have preferred someone else to be filling his position.

Paddy Manning: NSW convenor Hall Greenland downplays the animosity on Facebook.

If you go on Facebook, the Greens have an unofficial discussion page and I've seen some of this, it's abusive. For example, Bob Brown was accused of a 'brain fart', there was a suggestion that Justin Field was a 'careerist leech', there's complaints about so-called 'tree Tories'. There's obviously a level of bitterness there within the party, and division.

Hall Greenland: I think in all parties you will get people who overreact and who in more sober moments would not defend those kind of remarks. Yeah, there's tensions and there's friction but to say there's a level of hostility or hate or loathing or fear or whatever seems to me to go right over the top.

Paddy Manning: When the electronic count was finished at the party's Glebe headquarters, just under half the party's 4,500 members in NSW had voted. That makes it one of the biggest preselection ballots ever held in this country.

Speaker 1: So in the end we had just short of 2,000 voters which is close to half of the people eligible.

Speaker 2: That's fantastic, yeah. Although we usually have that many vote.

Speaker 1: Oh no, that's slightly up on normal…

Paddy Manning: Field won solidly, with most of his support coming from the state's north. On a two-candidate preferred basis it was 54-44, between Justin Field and left-wing frontrunner James Ryan.

Whatever the intention had been behind the group ticket, the members didn't follow it.

So this was billed as the first preselection where you had candidates voting as a block. Did the members vote on factional lines?

Speaker 1: Oh, largely not, I think people make up their own minds out in the Greens. I mean there's obviously a small effect there, but the predominant effect was preferences going all over the shop.

Paddy Manning: On both sides of the party, the preselection is seen as marking a new phase of competition.

Do you accept that there's been a new level of acrimony that's been involved this time around, or…?

Hall Greenland: I don't know whether you'd say acrimony. Certainly there's been a certain raising of the level of competition and it's opened a new phase in pre-selections in NSW.

Paddy Manning: Bob Brown, too, believes the preselection was a watershed.

Bob Brown: We saw, for the first time, candidates which Lee Rhiannon and others backed, giving preferences, cross preferencing, as a block to stop other people from getting up. Weighing the odds, in other words. It didn't work. I do think that's a good thing, and I think that in itself indicates that there is a power shift going on within the NSW Greens and we're moving into the 21st century there.

Paddy Manning: The preselection strengthened the position of NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham, who is now pushing for direct election of office bearers, plebiscites among members, and the appointment of a parliamentary leader.

Jeremy Buckingham: Well, if we don't have a leader, we don't have accountability, we have de facto leaders, and that's a real problem.

Bob Brown: It's sensible that they elect a leader. I see that there's a move by Jeremy, at least he spoke up in the Parliament the other day, for more plebiscites or referenda within the Greens. I've been pushing for that, and made sure the provision for that in the Australian Greens was there back in 1992, but I've never been able successfully to get up a referendum on, for example, having a national database, because it was blocked by the same few people in the NSW Greens. It's good now that there are advocates within the NSW Greens elected MPs pursuing that sort of sensible outcome.

Paddy Manning: Australian Greens leader Richard di Natale declined to be interviewed for this program, but he was asked about the NSW tensions on ABC radio in Melbourne.

Here he is talking with Jon Faine:

Richard di Natale: Well, as far as I'm aware having seen the report, Jon, it was a debate within the state party of the NSW Greens, and obviously you had state politicians expressing different views about issues, like whether there should be a leader for the state party in NSW, and obviously that will be an issue that they will debate and resolve. And as a party that is consistently reviewing what we do and how we operate, I think it's absolutely a live question for them to resolve.

Jon Faine: Are you pretending it's got nothing to do with you? That's unconvincing in extreme.

Richard di Natale: Well, when you have state politicians, I wouldn't weigh into a debate amongst state politicians, whether they be in Victoria or NSW…

Jon Faine: Well, in that case it damages your brand.

Richard di Natale: Well, I'm the leader of the federal parliamentary party…

Jon Faine: You're the leader of the Greens nationally, it damages your brand for this to continue and for you to pretend it's nothing to do with you.

Richard di Natale: Oh no, I'm not pretending nothing to do with me, I'm just suggesting to you that it's an issue needs to be resolved within the NSW state party, and obviously there is a live debate going on. As far as I could tell, one of the questions was whether the state party in NSW have a leader. Again, that's a debate that will go on within NSW, but I think it's a good thing that they are having these sorts of debates and arguing about the appropriate governance practices for the party, that's a good thing.

Paddy Manning: The NSW Greens talk about doing politics differently, but are they just doing politics badly?

Here's John Kaye's widow Lynne Joselyn:

What about the idea of appointing a parliamentary leader, what's wrong with that?

Lynne Joselyn: It ends up being the politics of personality. We end up talking about who's leader, who wants to be leader, who's going to oust that leader, it's all about who's captaining the football team and who's going to win the premiership. I mean, we really should be talking about issues, about issues for the Australian people. We need to be articulating sound policy, we need to be talking about the ideas, and not the competitive power-plays.

Paddy Manning: But the power-plays look likely to continue in NSW. The left will not give up. Greens member Phillipa Parsons:

Phillipa Parsons: I've been concerned that these attacks from the right have been undermining the unity of the party and the left have chosen to turn the other cheek and just cop it sweet basically. Right about now I'm really concerned for our party and this is why I've decided to speak out, that the time for the left for silence is over and it's time for us to push back a little bit and say no more.

Paddy Manning: Background Briefing understands that a small meeting at a Redfern pub three weeks ago discussed plans to formalise a left faction once and for all. Lee Rhiannon says she knows nothing about it.

What if, as a result of this pre-selection battle, factions were to be formed for the first time?

Lee Rhiannon: You're talking about something that I'm not up on, Paddy. Just as factions develop within the major parties, maybe we have to contend with this issue within the Greens. I'm interested in what you're talking about, but I don't know what the details are. That's a bit startling.

Paddy Manning: Bob Brown is unfazed.

What if the factionalism we've just seen in this preselection actually becomes entrenched and you do have formal factions in the NSW Greens?

Bob Brown: Well, so be it. I think if the folk who have been predominant want to become a minor entity within the party into the future, that's their right. That's how all other parties function. The Liberals have got that. Labor's got it. The National Party's got it. So I don't fear it.

Paddy Manning: Beneath the strategic differences, there are also big policy differences being thrashed out here. On the one hand are those who first and foremost want to tackle rising inequality. They want the Greens to adopt, for example, a death tax.

Voice 1: Lambie's economic platform now arguably comes across as more progressive and ambitious than ours in some areas, e.g. including a Tobin tax and progressive estate tax in current demands.

Voice 2: I think the fact that the reactionary crossbenchers have been more willing than us to embrace populist responses to inequality, is one reason why we are losing the antiestablishment vote.

Voice 3: 100% agree that the goalposts are shifting and we are being left behind.

Voice 4: Lee Rhiannon proposed a death tax on the rich about 10 years ago. Those who remember that tax and the hardship it caused were totally against it. The media still use it against the Greens.

Voice 5: Inheritance tax is so radical that it has been in place in the UK forever.

Voice 6: It was Australian Greens policy till Bob Brown in his last act yelled enough at national council in 2012 to convince other states to agree to pull it. It was a very stupid outcome given the rise of consciousness of the 99% versus the 1%, and I bent over backwards to try to make it clear it would only target estates over $5 million.

Paddy Manning: Jeremy Buckingham flatly rejects the suggestion that his side, with their regional support base, are neoliberals who want to drag the party to the right.

Jeremy Buckingham: We come from areas where people have lost the most out of trickle-down economics, where we don't have the hospital, where we don't have the roads, where there is no public services. So we are the people who want guaranteed adequate income, we are the people who want wealth redistribution, we are the people that want to tax the rich.

Paddy Manning: Buckingham is a straight talker and argues (and he uses some strong language here) that climate change should be the Greens' number one priority. A recent survey of 9,000 members showed 90% of them agree with him.

Jeremy Buckingham: We've got the message from the membership, the wider community, the supporters of the Greens just want us to get really fucking serious about climate change. That has to be our focus. All the other things are important, there's no doubt about it, social issues. There has to be a voice for that in Australia, saying climate change is absolutely primal to all policy making, and that we have to stop fossil fuels, no ifs, no buts, no new coal, no coal seam gas. And we have to get radical about it. We have to be relentless. We have to keep saying it until we're blue in the face and spewing up, because Labor aren't doing it, the coalition aren't doing it. While they obfuscate and delay, the planet cooks. And the Greens need to get radical, we need to get out there, be on the blockades, blockade those coal ports, get arrested. Keep saying it until people are absolutely sick to death of it because that's our job, to defend the planet and put ecology first.

Paddy Manning: The Greens, you're saying, aren't doing that enough at the moment?

Jeremy Buckingham: I don't think we are. I think we could do it better.

Paddy Manning: Ecological sustainability and social justice are both key pillars for the Greens, but which comes first? For some on the NSW left, clearly it's social justice. At the most extreme, as one Facebook contributor put it:

Voice: There's no point saving the planet so that the exploitation of people can continue unchecked.

Paddy Manning: The difference is important, the stakes are high, and neither side is giving up. On his deathbed, John Kaye rallied his supporters

John Kaye [archival]: I know that each and every one of you is committed to the Greens and committed to the idea that we can write a future that is profoundly fair and is profoundly sustainable. I know that, and that gives me great comfort as I face my last, because I know that the work that's been done over the last 30 years of the Greens, longer, that work will not cease. That work will go on and on. That work will always be there. There will always be a spark...in any decent society there will always be a spark that says it doesn't have to be this way, we can change it. Friends, colleagues, comrades, keep up the struggle. Love you all! [tearful]

Paddy Manning: Background Briefing's co-ordinating producer is Linda McGinness, our series producer is Tim Roxburgh, technical production this week by Leila Shunnar, executive producer is Wendy Carlisle, and I'm Paddy Manning.

Hall Greenland: The media loves a bit of conflict, a bit of friction. You know, there's plenty of life in the party, there's plenty of optimism. Nope, I don't think there is a crisis.

Paddy Manning: Nothing to see here?

Hall Greenland: Move along Paddy, yes, nothing to see here.