00:02On the banks of the Catherine River sits Catherine Hospital, which some say shouldn't be there at all.
00:09I think the Catherine Hospital really does need to move into a flood-free zone.
00:14The territory town, 300 kilometres south of Darwin, has just been through its worst floods in 28 years.
00:21The hospital was evacuated and then two weeks later, as the flood threat returned, it had to be evacuated again,
00:29with a temporary hospital set up instead.
00:33You know, in a situation like this, rather than having to spend money and time setting up a field hospital,
00:39if we had the hospital available in Catherine East, all of those patients could have stayed.
00:43All of that, the staff could have continued potentially working.
00:46The patients were evacuated north to the ageing and perpetually stressed Royal Darwin Hospital.
00:53Obviously, having Catherine close its doors and ship everybody up to Darwin,
00:58it put enormous pressure on an already stretched system that seems to be teetering in terms of its ability to
01:06cope with day-to-day demand.
01:08Catherine Longtermers say moving the hospital has been on the wish list for decades.
01:13But no government has been prepared to stump up.
01:16If they put real money into it and actually plan for it to be done, I mean, it's not something
01:21that happens quickly, obviously,
01:23so you could hope that it would be done before the next 20-year flood.
01:26If we're going to move a hospital, then the federal government are going to have to come to our aid,
01:31because that is significant.
01:33Those costs are very, very high.
01:35The NT government says for now it will start looking at other ways to better protect Catherine from floods,
01:42including more mitigation where the hospital currently stands.
01:46They take it to run away from Christmas events.
01:48They take things to the
01:48my own irrespective and the school of the home to all.
01:48Bailey, we are going to go to the state of San Francisco's family,
01:49They take things to the state of San Francisco's family with his mother and the to the state of San
01:49Francisco's family.
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