FEARS are growing within Labor that the fight with the Greens may have leadership consequences as ministers and MPs vent their spleens at the minor party and some begin to question the power-sharing deal Julia Gillard cut with them.
As another Newspoll showed the government still flatlining, more joined the fray, attacking the Greens for intransigence on asylum seeker policy, refusing to back company tax cuts associated with the mining tax, and blocking in the Senate the original carbon pollution reduction scheme.
The Finance Minister, Penny Wong, used a speech in Brisbane on Monday night to say, if the Greens had passed the scheme, emissions trading would be embedded rather than at the risk of being repealed by Tony Abbott.
''Where the Greens claim to share our values, their inability to compromise, their unwillingness to take on board evidence and their refusal to accept that politics inevitably involves trade-offs means they cannot deliver policy outcomes to reflect these values,'' she said.
The row flared after the Labor NSW general-secretary, Sam Dastyari, proposed a motion for this weekend's state conference enabling party officials not to automatically preference the Greens.
It opened the floodgates for long-held frustrations. One minister noted that key supporters of Kevin Rudd, including Martin Ferguson and Joel Fitzgibbon, had been quick to jump in while, privately, Rudd backers are saying Ms Gillard should never have entered into such a comprehensive agreement with the Greens, given they would never have backed the Coalition.
The West Australian Labor MP Melissa Parke criticised her NSW colleagues for a second day, saying it was ''a confected non-issue'' that only helped the Coalition.
The NSW Labor assistant secretary, John Graham, said the Left, which has warned Mr Dastyari's motion must not signal a policy shift to the right, would seek wording that commits to a progressive stance.
''We will argue for a resolution that makes it clear that Labor is the party of social justice, environmental protection, the arts and civil liberties,'' he said.
Mr Graham also branded the Greens hypocrites for complaining about Labor's move, highlighting comments by the NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham.
In a tweet, Mr Buckingham said the party's decision not to preference Labor or the Coalition before last year's state election ''cost them [Labor] a dozen plus seats''.
Mr Graham said the decision almost got former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson elected.
''The Greens are demanding Labor preferences but boasting about helping Barry O'Farrell at the last election,'' he said.
Mr Buckingham responded: ''The Brainiacs from the NSW Labor Right, who delivered the worst election defeat in their history, need to recognise that abandoning progressive policies and preferencing the likes of Family First, Fred Nile and Tony Abbott ahead of the Greens, will only speed up Labor's demise.''
