Pauline Hanson’s radical plans to kill cane toads

Pauline Hanson wants to put a bounty on cane toads, paying people who are willing to put down their iPads and kill them.

Pauline Hanson says welfare recipients should be put to work killing cane toads.

The One Nation leader’s plan would see Work for the Dole recipients get paid 10 cents for each toad they collect in a three-month, collect-a-toad campaign during the summer, The Courier Mail reports.

Senator Hanson has written to Prime Minister Scott Morrison to back the federally funded scheme in Queensland, NSW, Western Australia and the Northern Territory as a way to eradicate the cane toad menace.

Her suggestion comes as the government slams Labor’s proposed welfare system reform.

Ms Hanson told Today this morning that cane toads were dangerous to the environment and ate bees, beetles, lizards and quolls. They were also poisonous to crocodiles and dingoes.

“They are very much a pest and a menace,” she said.

She noted there were now an estimated 200 million cane toads in Australia, despite an eradication program in 2008 and they have now migrated from the area near Cairns in Far North Queensland down to NSW and into the Northern Territory.

“They are not a nice animal and they breed,” she said.

“I have written to the Prime Minister saying, ‘look, all those people out there Work for the Dole are doing absolutely nothing, or even kids that are on holidays’, put down the iPads, get out there, collect the cane toads ... and clean up our environment.”

Ms Hanson said she saw people taking bottles out of rubbish bins for 10 cents and in some areas where there were a lot of cane toads, someone could pick up hundreds in one night.

“I think it is great for the kids to get out and do this, under the supervision of their parents if they are young,” she said.

When asked about the possibility that a black market would emerge with some people breeding toads to get the money, Ms Hanson said she didn’t think they would do that for 10 cents.

“They are moving further south and west and something needs to be done about it.”

Feral cane toads have become a pest. Picture: Getty (iStock)