Delegates from the National and Liberal parties were to meet this weekend at the Sofitel Hotel to vote on a new state conservative party, to be called the Liberal National Party of Queensland.

But the Liberal Party State Council last night narrowly voted in favour of deferring this weekend's conferenece.

Reports this morning indicate the vote was split along the lines of the Queensland Liberals notorious factional divide.

The issue at the centre of the split are calls for a Liberal Party member to be installed as the new joint party State president to prevent a "takeover" by The Nationals.

The Nationals and many Liberals want the president to be elected from the floor of this weekend's conference by the parties' grassroots membership.

Mr Springborg said documents signed in May made it clear that delegates, not Liberal Party powerbrokers, at this weekend's conventions would select the new president.

However, the Liberal Party's federal president, Alan Stockdale, has demanded that the first president of the amalgamated party comes from his party.

Mr Springborg said the issue has been brought to the fore as an attempt to scuttle the merger.

"This is just a desperate, 11th-hour attempt by these people to protect the status quo and to try find anything they can to torpedo [the merger], " Mr Springborg said.

The 40-year-old Nationals leader said the issue was not raised by the Liberals in the lead-up to the convention and it was clearly defined in May before Liberal members voted for a merger of the two parties.

"The membership of the Liberal Party were told in the accompanying documentation with their ballot paper that the president would be elected by the delegates," Mr Springborg said.

"And they voted in full knowledge of it. It was there."

Mr Springborg's message to antagonistic Liberal Party powerbrokers was clear: "Stop putting the wheel-chocks under it. Stop trying to pull it apart. Get out of the road."

Later, in a lengthy interview, he said ratifying the merger this weekend would be no easy task.

"There is no doubt that we've got these people who were never in favour of it up here anyway, who were shocked by the level of support by the Liberal Party - I mean 86pc," he said.

"Now their one shot in the locker is to try to derail it federally by inventing an obstacle that was never an issue when we negotiated or signed it, or even when the Liberal members voted on it."

Conservative politics in Queensland has languished in Opposition for 10 years, with factional infighting a consistent observation of the Queensland Liberals.

The 17 Nationals MPs and eight Liberals are dwarfed by the ALP's 59 MPs in Queensland Parliament.

Former Liberal MP Mal Brough told The Australian on Tuesday that the dispute was broader than the choice of the president of the new party, and included difficulties over protection of rural MPs, dropping "grandfathering" clauses protecting sitting MPs and reducing the power of the "presidential" committee.