The New South Wales Greens have jumped to the defence of the federal senator Lee Rhiannon, labelling her suspension from the federal party room as “unconstitutional”.
The NSW state delegates council voted at a meeting on Saturday to support Rhiannon after she was banished from the federal party room last month for opposing the Turnbull government’s Gonski 2.0 funding package.
The state delegates requested Rhiannon be “fully reinstated without restriction” to the federal party room for all meetings.
The federal arm of the party last month excluded Rhiannon from party room discussions and decisions on government legislation until the NSW branch ends the practice of binding their MPs to vote a certain way.
The national party room described the practice as “a structural issue that needs to be addressed”.
The proposal voted upon by the NSW branch also affirmed a commitment “to work constructively” with the national council to clarify decision-making between different factions of the Greens.
On Saturday the former Greens leader Christine Milne accused Rhiannon and her state branch of exercising veto powers over the national party room, and picking and choosing issues to undermine.
Rhiannon has called on the party room to review her expulsion, claiming her leader, Richard Di Natale, and colleagues were well aware of her opposition to the school funding bill. On the ABC’s Insiders program last week she said she was “disappointed” in Di Natale’s leadership.
However, Rhiannon’s Tasmanian colleague Peter Whish-Wilson said she was out of line, with the co-deputy leader Larissa Waters saying she was proud of the job being done by Di Natale.
Senator Janet Rice took to her Facebook page to object to claims that Rhiannon’s position mean she was the only one in the Greens who was standing up for public education, describing them as “profoundly inaccurate”.
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