She was once a darling of the Howard government for winning the prized Western Sydney seat of Lindsay but Jackie Kelly has quit the Liberal Party and slammed it on the way out saying "lobbyists are running the Liberal Party".
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In her resignation letter to NSW Liberal Party state director Tony Nutt, Ms Kelly said she was sick of the New South Wales branch delaying critical internal reforms to democratise the party and opening up lower house preselections to plebiscites, as recommended by former prime minister John Howard.
Ms Kelly wrote that she had not torn up her 19-year membership lightly but said "I would rather be outside the tent and use my voice rather than have it silenced by being inside an organisation happy to reform electoral laws but not prepared to reform itself".
She said the practice of circumventing state laws banning political donations from property developers "has been a widely used practice" and only recently exposed by ICAC.
"Many grass roots members believe that the State Executive has, at best, turned a blind eye, and at worst, been complicit. This exposes the corrosive control that self-interested lobbyists have over the NSW Liberal Party and how yet again reform will stall after the next election."
When contacted by Fairfax Media, Ms Kelly said the NSW Liberal Party had been in the "stranglehold of lobbyists" for the past five years and there was no longer any point being a member because no-one gets a say.
"There's no local voice in the Liberal Party, there's no reason to be a member because the lobbyists are running the party," the former Howard government minister said.
"It's created a whole bunch of 'yes' politicians.
"The factionalism is making us ineffective, every MP has a responsibility to clean it up."
Ms Kelly said her Liberal friends across the border in Victoria "laugh" at the NSW division.
But Fairfax Media understands State Council scheduled in November will dedicate an entire afternoon to debating and discussing future party reform based on the Howard report.
Major change, including the introduction of plebiscites would require 60 per cent of the state executive to agree, meaning a broad consensus could take some time to achieve, as accomplished by David Kemp when he reformed the Victorian division.
Mr Kemp was also on the committee on the Howard report.
Asked what she intended to do outside the party, Ms Kelly said she intended to "pour her energies" into campaigning against the proposed Badgery's Creek airport and attacked sitting Western Sydney Liberal MPs as "pathetic" for staying quiet on the issue.
"It's a crappy decision on the airport, enough's enough," she said.
Ms Kelly has previously vowed to "do over" her former close friend Tony Abbott with a "soccer-mums" style campaign against the Prime Minister's decision to go ahead with a second Sydney airport.
Ms Kelly listed the second Sydney Airport as one of three issues contributing to her decision to quit the party.
The mixed bag of grievances included a local park and train line.
She was unsuccessful. Several sources believed Ms Kelly's resignation could be the start of her launching a bid to run as independent.
Ms Kelly was elected in 1996 and was made a minister within two years. She retired from federal politics in 2007. Her departure was mired in controversy when her husband was caught handing out fake pamphlets purporting to be from a non-existent Islamic group thanking the Labor Party for supporting terrorists.
Ms Kelly denied any knowledge of the incident at the time and described it as a harmless "Chaser style prank".
