The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has recorded 241 redundancies since the beginning of the financial year. The ABC’s chief operating officer David Pendleton confirmed the figure during a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra.

The ABC announced a redundancy process at the end of last year as a result of the Federal Government’s decision to reintroduce an efficiency dividend for the national broadcaster, cutting the budget by $254 million over the next five years.

ABC managing director Mark Scott said the overall figure for redundancies also included some staff who lost their positions when the Coalition withdrew funding for the Australia Network last year. Mr Scott was asked to detail how many staff had been made redundant so far due to the domestic budget constraints. He told the committee more than 100 staff have “exited” through direct redundancies.

Shame that Tony Abbott had to break an election promise to make the funding cuts he did. He justifies it by saying the outgoing Labor party misrepresented the state of the govt’s finances and he therefore had to make much greater spending cuts than anticipated.

I think Abbott should never ever have made that promise and I don’t know that he had to. Nevertheless its not a good look after the criticism the Liberals heaped upon Julia Gillard for her broken promises (“there will be no carbon tax under any govt I lead”).

The ABC really has to go for its unprofessional left wing/ Marxist bias. Its purposeful undermining of and constant attacks on Abbott have been unrelenting. They probably think its justifed by his broken promise.