Five years ago, Greens leader Bob Brown proudly declared he led "the most cohesive and happy party room" in federal Parliament. Locked in a power-sharing deal with Julia Gillard, the Greens were giddy after helping to pass the carbon and mining taxes into law.
Now Brown is gone, so are both the taxes, and it's hard to imagine using the words "happy" and "Greens party room" together with a straight face. This week the Greens even managed to match the Liberal Party for disunity - no small feat given Christopher Pyne's late-night boasting and Tony Abbott's increasingly brazen policy interventions.
Like many wars, this one started with something seemingly small: a leaflet, authorised by NSW Senator Lee Rhiannon, opposing the Turnbull government's Gonski 2.0 school funding model.
Usually, this would be nothing more banal than a Greens senator criticising Coalition policy. In this case, it was incendiary. As the leaflet hit mailboxes in Sydney, Greens leader Richard di Natale was on the cusp of striking a deal on schools with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Senator Rhiannon hadn't told her colleagues about the leaflet.
Furious, her nine party room colleagues wrote a letter of complaint about her behaviour. Years of simmering tensions – about the party's structures, its policy direction, its very reason for being – had suddenly come to the boil.
The NSW branch of the Greens has always been fiercely independent. The state party reserves the right to "bind" its federal MPs to vote against the will of the federal party room (a fact little-known until recently). Unlike in other branches, there is no NSW Greens leader. And while the Tasmanian Greens party has its roots in environmental activism, several senior NSW Greens such as Senator Rhiannon entered the party via socialism.
Senator Rhiannon's rivals disparagingly refer to her grouping as the Eastern Bloc or the "watermelons" – green on the outside and red (communist) within.
In turn, the hard left of the party accuses Senator Di Natale and more moderate Greens of being sell-outs to the right: "neoliberals on bikes" or "tree Tories".
As the Greens federal party room met in Melbourne on Wednesday to decide Senator Rhiannon's fate, her foes thought her political career could be over.
The marathon meeting ended with a surprise outcome. The party room resolved to end the practice of NSW MPs being bound to vote against their federal colleagues and to exclude Senator Rhiannon from important policy discussions until that happened.
Rather than bringing the infighting to an end, the decision seemed only to broaden it.
Tim Hollo, a former communications director to ex-Greens leader Christine Milne, posted on Facebook: "Massive mistake. Huge error of judgement. Just wrong.
"Regardless of what you think of Lee, regardless of what you think of Gonski 2.0, regardless of the ongoing animosities, this action, in my opinion, is both a tactical and strategic mistake of grand scale."
A NSW Greens source, who is no fan of Senator Rhiannon, said: "A lot of people are annoyed the party room put the focus on processes in NSW rather than on Lee's behaviour.
"It strengthens Lee by broadening the issue to NSW; people rally around the flag.
"It was an error."
Another NSW Greens source said: "People see this as blackmail - an attempt to control our policies and procedures."
There is talk within NSW of withholding funding from the federal party at the next federal election and running their own campaign instead.
Senator Rhiannon blasted the move as "wrong" and "unconstitutional", saying: "Our party's constitution ensures members have a right to participate in decision-making, that's the way we do things in NSW."
Bizarrely, senior Greens figures are still unsure whether Senator Rhiannon was officially directed to vote against Gonski 2.0 or not. It's unclear how the "binding" process works and who gets a say in it.
Besides Senator Rhiannon, Adam Bandt was the only Greens MP to vote against excluding her from party room discussions. In a Facebook post he explained, "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."
The times, Mr Bandt said, should suit the Greens. "People are starting to dream again. And it's wonderful."
Others are less optimistic. NSW Greens sources agree there is next to no chance the state party will relinquish its right to direct federal MPs how to vote. This means Senator Di Natale and his federal colleagues will have to back down or risk a deepening stoush with what has historically been the party's biggest branch.
"This may not be resolved," an insider warns, "between now and the next election."
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