ABC budget will be cut by 5%, says Malcolm Turnbull

The communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has finally put a figure on the Coalition’s cuts to the ABC budget, saying 5% will be slashed each year for five years and that management should find the cuts easy to make in administrative areas.

“It’s about 5% of the ABC ... it will average over five years about 5% off the top,” Turnbull said on ABC’s Q&A program on Monday. He indicated the announcement would be made later this week.

“I have gone to considerable pains to ensure that the ABC is well able to deliver these savings without cutting into the resources available to programming, through cutting back office costs, administrative. Anyone here who has been in business ... that could not manage to find 5% out of efficiencies is not even trying,” he said.

But the ABC board has already decided it will need to cut more than administrative costs. Several TV and radio programs, services and hundreds of jobs will fall victim to the cuts, which the prime minister, Tony Abbott, promised in his election campaign would not happen.

Before the election Abbott told SBS News: “No cuts to the ABC or SBS”.

Earlier on Monday night’s Media Watch program the host, Paul Barry, said the cut was closer to 9% of the ABC’s $1.1bn budget when the loss of the Australia Network contract and other special funding was added.

“We understand the ABC will lose $50m a year, on top of $9m a year that was flagged back in May,” Barry said. That’s close to 6% of the ABC’s annual budget of $1.1bn. Add in the loss of the Australia Network and various bits of special funding and that figure is more like 9% a year.”

Barry also said TV production in South Australia will be shut down and $6m would be sliced off ABC radio, with big cuts at Classic FM. “In all, some 400 to 500 jobs will go ... with people being shown the door by Christmas,” he said.

As revealed by Guardian Australia, the ABC’s network of foreign correspondents will be scaled back considerably.

The plan is to create four foreign correspondent “hubs” in Washington, London, Jakarta and Beijing and have camera crews flying in and out of hot spots.

The local editions of 7:30 will be shut down and local current affairs relegated to elsewhere in ABC news bulletins.

Radio faces a big cut, including axing a raft of Radio National programs, reported in September.

Two former Victorian premiers have thrown their support behind the campaign to save the ABC from further cuts.

The ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, has admitted he needed to cut programs to find money to fund new digital projects. He signalled in a speech earlier this year the ABC’s expansion online was vital if the ABC was to thrive in the digital future.

The bulk of the ABC’s $1.1bn budget is spent on TV and radio rather than on digital.

“To meet the future, we will need to contemplate and embrace measures that extend beyond operational efficiencies, forcing real content choices,” he said in the speech at the Queensland University of Technology.

The ABC unions have organised a week of protests called “Hands off our ABC”, which will feature rallies in each state.

The campaign, organised by the Community and Public Sector Union and the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance, said it would “give the Australian public an opportunity to celebrate their public broadcaster and to voice their concerns about the government’s brutal cuts”.

Two former Victorian premiers have thrown their support behind the campaign to save the ABC from further cuts.

“I support the continuance of the 7.30 Victoria Weekly Report. It is an important current affairs program which is widely watched and immensely respected across Victoria. The ABC Charter encourages programming which is not readily taken up by the commercial networks.This is just such a program, said former Labor premier Steve Bracks.

Meanwhile former Liberal premier Ted Baillieu said, “It would be a great loss to Victoria’s public dialogue if the ABC was to drop its State based 7.30 report.

“I have taken the opportunity with ABC management several times over the last few years to urge the ABC to not only retain the Victorian based 7.30 report and it’s predecessor Stateline, but to give it greater prominence and shift it to Monday night - bigger audience and greater significance. My views have not changed. We may not always agree but informed discussion is essential to our community. Not so long ago Victorians enjoyed more than 7 hours a week of state based current affairs on television. That has shrunk to 30 minutes on a Friday night.”