Greens Leader Richard Di Natale has gone to ground as in-fighting breaks out among his colleagues.

Dr Di Natale has pulled out of a fortnightly engagement on Tom Elliott’s Drive program while he deals with rogue senator Lee Rhiannon.

Rhiannon, an influential veteran politician and former Communist party member, has been censured for breaking ranks during Gonski negotiations.

Dr Di Natale has been happy to chat with Tom when the going’s easy for the past several months, but not today.

Tom Elliott’s production team suggested another Greens MP could appear on the program instead, but that suggestion was ignored.

“The Greens do not want to talk to us because they do not want to admit their party is splitting,” he said in a scathing critique at the start of his show.

“It makes me angry … because when you have an arrangement with a politician where you say ‘Alright we’ll give you half an hour a fortnight to talk about what you want to talk about’, and then when something bad goes on in their own party they absolutely go to water – they shut up shop, they lock the door, they do not answer your calls – I do not like it.

“I don’t really give a stuff if the Greens want to split over this person, but I put it to Richard Di Natale just few months ago … that Lee Rhiannon was a problem, and he denied, denied, denied.|

Full audio of Tom’s scathing whack above