Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised questions about sexuality will be included in the next Australian census, amid a widening backlash.

Albanese said the Australian Bureau of Statistics was developing a question about sexuality for the national snapshot in 2026.

“They’re going to test for a new question, one question about sexuality, sexual preference,” he told ABC Radio on Friday, by phone from the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga.

“They’ll be testing, making sure as well that people will have the option of not answering it.”

Albanese denied the government had been forced to back down from omitting questions on sexuality in the census, amid unrest within its own ranks and from an array of community groups.

Earlier, Liberal MP Bridget Archer said it was frustrating Labor had created controversy over the issue.

Labor frontbenchers had said the government pulled plans to add the question to avoid a “divisive” and “nasty” fight, despite pledging to count the queer community in its 2023 national platform.

“Because this debate that we’re having now is not nasty and divisive?” Archer asked sarcastically on ABC radio on Friday.

“I don’t think anybody was thinking about it, talking about it, concerned about it, until the government told them they should be concerned in some way by deciding not to go ahead with it.

The question only added to data, Archer said, noting there were always stories about how many Australians put their religion as Jedi from Star Wars after each national snapshot.

” ‘Do we need to know?’, people might ask. But we do collect information and that statistical population information is used in all sorts of ways,” she said.

“It’s not in any way controversial. There shouldn’t be any kind of … moral value or something attached to it.

“The government has actually created a controversy where there’s none.”

Archer’s view put her at odds with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who said the question was part of a “woke agenda”. The existing census had “stood us well as a country”, he said on Thursday.

“If you’ve got the woke agenda, which I think is at odds with the vast majority of Australians, then the Prime Minister should argue that case, but I think we’re pretty happy with the settings that we’ve got in place,” Dutton said.

ACT Labor Chief Minister Andrew Barr had also expressed disappointment at the federal decision. Barr, who is gay, said “there has rightly been a strong focus on the value of data collection to inform evidence-based policies and service delivery”.

Almost 70 organisations that support LGBTQI communities signed a statement calling for federal Labor to reverse its decision.

Firebrand conservatives also came out saying they didn’t care about the question.

“Put it in or put it out, it doesn’t matter to me,” Nationals senator Ross Cadell said.

His party room colleague Keith Pitt said, “[We] need to focus on an actual crisis”.

Ex-Liberal senator turned independent Gerard Rennick said while he didn’t care, the question wasn’t relevant “as it’s personal”.

“But in some respects, I’d be curious to know the percentages,” he said.

Some Labor backbenchers had broken ranks with their leadership.

Josh Burns, Peter Khalil, Alicia Payne and assistant health minister Ged Kearney argued the government should reverse the decision and count LGBTQI people.

All four face challenges from the more progressive Greens, which have named their seats as targets in the upcoming federal election.

“I’ve made it clear that the way we govern needs to be inclusive and the census is an important tool to gather data and feed that into government systems and services,” Burns told The Guardian on Thursday.

“For that to work the best it can, we need as few blind spots as possible, which is why I am asking the government to reconsider this decision.”

On Friday, Burns said he was pleased with the backdown.

“I definitely welcome the Prime Minister’s comments this morning. I think that they go to making sure people are counted, and I think that they go to the work that we’re doing to ensure that we are collecting the best data possible to feed into government services as part of the census,” he told ABC radio.

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-with AAP