The axe is coming to the national broadcaster this week, with the ABC breaking the details of its own looming amputations on Monday night: $50 million a year in new cuts will mean the loss of up to 500 jobs by Christmas, the death of state-based current affairs, a tighter budget for Lateline

On Media Watch, these and other cuts were flagged as a near 6 per cent hack from the ABC budget. Later on Q&A, Malcolm Turnbull put the figure at around 5 per cent but refused to offer much more detail. "It'll average over five years about 5 per cent off the top," the Communications Minister said. "I'll have a lot more to say about it later in the week." The cuts closely reflect the figures first reported by Fairfax Media last week.

Media Watch said that taking in the loss of the Australia Network contract and other special funding, the actual figure was more like 9 per cent, with managing director Mark Scott likely to tell staff the full scale of the cuts on Thursday.

Some departments can breathe more easily than others, host Paul Barry reported. ABC2 and ABC3 survive; Radio National is cut by only 2 per cent, thanks to ABC board intervention; regional radio has been mostly left alone. But the predicted demise of the Friday night state-based 7.30 programs is going ahead, and Lateline "will be cut back" but will stay on ABC1, Barry said. Twenty jobs will go as foreign bureaus are squeezed in Tokyo, Bangkok, New Delhi and New Zealand. And ABC radio will lose $6 million.