More than 400 staff at Australian Broadcasting Corporation could lose their jobs as the public broadcaster faces a budget cut of $254 million over the next five years.

The announcement was made by Managing Director, Mark Scott, on Monday.

“We anticipate that more than 400 people – close to 10 per cent of our ongoing workforce – face potential redundancy as we adjust our activities over coming months,” Scott said.

$20 million will be cut from the ABC’s budget in 2015-16, $61 million in 2016-17, $55 million in 2017-18 and $68 million in 2018-19.

The announcement also included proposed programming changes for ABC Local, Radio National and ABC Classic FM programming.

The cuts have been criticised by many including the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). MEAA federal secretary Chris Warren said: “The minuscule savings they’ve got in terms of the scale of the budget they’re dealing with is really not worth the loss to Australian culture, democracy and society that flows from there.”

The cuts were earlier defended by Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying: “the ABC should not be exempted from the kind of measures that are being applied to almost every other part of government.”