In a surprise move on Friday morning, Mr Baird and Mr Turnbull put forward their plan to unite warring elements in the Liberal Party and defuse a potential intra-party fight at Saturday's NSW Liberal state council meeting by democratising policy making, growing the membership and introducing pre-selections plebiscites.

In response, Mr Abbott told Fairfax Media he would back the Turnbull-Baird motion but his branch's motion calling for all branch members to be given a vote in preselections to be introduced as soon as practical would not be withdrawn.

Mr Abbott said he was still hopeful the Warringah reform motion would be passed as it was not inconsistent with the aims of the special reform convention in 2017.

"I welcome all the work that the PM and the Premier have done here, to give the party a way forward and as far as I am concerned there is no inconsistency between the executive [Turnbull-Baird] motion and the Warringah motion," he said.

"It would be a very bad look for our party to vote against the principle of one member, one vote.

"For the NSW division to do that on spurious grounds, such as the risk of branch stacking, would be an implicit criticism of divisions that do have one member, one vote [including Victoria, Queensland and South Australia]."

The release of the Turnbull-Baird plan comes after an extraordinary week in which simmering tensions between Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott exploded into a public dispute over a ban on the Adler shotgun.

Senior party figures including Mr Abbott and former NSW premier Barry O'Farrell have been pushing to give individual branch members the right to vote under a so-called plebiscite system.

At present, voting in party preselections is restricted to branch representatives and some party officials.

It's understood there is a push to have any model decided by the convention to be legally binding and senior NSW Liberals are examining how this might be achieved.

The motion backed by Mr Turnbull and Mr Baird and put to the Liberal state executive on Friday morning proposes "a membership driven" model "to increase the democratisation, campaigning capacity and effectiveness of the party" modelled on Victorian rules.

It resolves that the model include ways to "improve policy participation by members", increase campaigning capacity of the NSW Division and "ensure greater opportunities for all genuine and active members to have a direct vote in preselection processes".

It also proposes reform that would increase members' involvement in party activities, and give more training to candidates and office bearers.

The motion resolves that the state executive will convene a "party futures convention" open to all members in the first half of 2017 "to resolve these issues".

A party source said: "This is the motion that has been devised by the Prime Minister and the Premier with the aim of uniting the entire party behind genuine reform to make sure we are focused on re-election in 2019."

Party reform has been on the official agenda since 2013 when then premier Mr O'Farrell and then prime minister Mr Abbott commissioned former prime minister John Howard to review the candidate selection system.

Mr Howard recommended a plebiscite system for choosing lower house candidates where all financial members in an electorate could vote as long as they had been members for at least two years, as an anti branch stacking measure.

The push for plebiscites has gained momentum in recent weeks after being backed by Mr Abbott and Mr Baird, who have said it will give ordinary branch members more say in the party.

But the left and centre right factions have resisted plebiscites arguing they will open the door to rampant branch stacking.