The Greens are on the brink of civil war, with nine members of federal parliamentary delegation demanding disciplinary action against NSW’s Senator Lee Rhiannon.

According to Fairfax media, the long-simmering feud is poised to boil over after Rhiannon put her name to a pamphlet contradicting her party’s negotiated position on Gonski 2.0.

The rift promises to pit the party’s hard-left NSW branch against the more moderate wing represented by party leader Richard Di Natale.

That friction came to a head during negotiations with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on his government’s Gonski 2.0 schools-funding bill.

Nine members of the 10-person federal caucus had agreed to support the measure after extracting promises of a $5 billion in additional funding.

Ms Rhiannon, the only hold-out, is said to have sown such division in caucus that the Greens could not strike a pact with the Education Minister Simon Birmingham, despite fellow Green Sarah Hanson-Young finding common ground after extensive negotiations with the Coalition.

Instead, the government obtained the votes it needed to pass the schools bill by courting the Nick Xenophon team and other crossbenchers.

The flyer bearing Senator Le Rhiannon’s signature that has infuriated fellow members of the Greens’ parliamentary caucus.

The nine Greens all signed a letter to the party’s national council demanding action against Ms Rhiannon, Fairfax Media reported.

The council met today but no announcement on the letter or any disciplinary measures has yet been forthcoming.

A spokesman for Senator Di Natale told AAP the party room would meet “shortly” to discuss the matter.

“We’re extremely disappointed that the letter was made public,” he said.

The leaflet, a copy of which was posted on Twitter, urged residents to call senators and demand they “take a stand for public education”.

Ms Rhiannon, a former member of the Communist Party, exerts enormous influence within the NSW branch, where the prevailing philosophy insists members of parliament must answer to the rank and file.

She summed up the party’s internal divide in an interview with the ABC in November, 2016.

“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?’ ” she said.

Political observers expand on that point by noting that Mr di Natale has quite deliberately attempted to re-cast the party’s image from what one Coalition strategist described to The New Daily as “the dark green fundamentalism of former leaders Bob Brown and Christine Milne”.

“All parties have right and left factions,” he continued.

“This is the moment when the Greens understand they are no different.”