The controversial proposal to axe the 2016 census has originated from the Bureau of Statistics rather than the Abbott government, the bureau has revealed.

The ABS has asked the government to legislate to remove the requirement that it conduct a census every 5 years and replace it with a requirement to conduct the survey only once every 10 years as happens in Britain and the United States.

The bureau has spent more than a year developing means of producing accurate population information without a census and is at the stage where it believes it can accurately update state populations every three months and smaller populations every year.