Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has launched a sensational attack on the NSW Liberal Party after it was revealed senior ministers conspired to rig a vote on democratic reform.

The Daily Telegraph reports federal and state ministers deliberately sabotaged a public vote on Mr Abbott’s ‘Warringah Motion’ which aimed to give Liberal Party members more power in choosing who should stand for parliament.

In 2014, it’s alleged Turnbull government minister Alex Hawke and senior NSW MPs Ray Williams­, Pru Goward, Scott Farlow and Natasha Maclaren-Jones attempted to influence a free vote on the issue in their favour.

The former PM called Ray Hadley’s program to launch a scathing attack on those involved.

“This is extraordinarily serious and it’s a sign of the rottenness at the heart of the NSW Liberal Party.

“There is a small and influential minority inside the party who are essentially careerists.

Some of them have got commercial interests in the political process and they are desperate to maintain their stranglehold over the party and they will go to pretty extraordinary lengths, very unethical lengths, to try to do that,” he tells Ray Hadley.

Mr Abbott’s reform proposal was defeated in 2014 but successfully passed last year.

The Member for Warringah says “self-serving careerism” is crippling the party.

“There is absolutely no doubt that some of these people have been machinating away, not in the national interest but in their personal interest.”

Click PLAY below to hear Mr Abbott’s blistering attack in full