Canberrans will be slugged more than $1.5 million to fix the Gungahlin pool, Liberal MLA Leanne Castley revealed today.

Even though the Labor-Greens government signed the contract with construction company Kynetic yesterday, Minister Berry could not tell a Gungahlin community Council meeting last night how much it would cost.

The government previously said the pool will open by this summer; however, the contract has the ‘estimated date for completion’ as December 4, 2022.

“The debacle continues,” Ms Castley said today.

“The contract on TendersACT puts the bill at $1,519,200 but Minister Berry last night could not tell the Gungahlin Community Council the price.

“The government approached Kynetic to do the job and signed with them yesterday, so it does not appear credible the Minister did not have the cost at the meeting I attended last night.

“The Minister also did not know if Kynetic was a Canberra company, could not say how long the warranty would be and could not say if Kynetic would incur penalties if they run overtime.

“Minister Berry says the government will send in regular inspectors, but they did inspections when the pool was initially built which failed to pick up any of the issues we are now seeing.

“There are still so many unanswered questions and it is clear from this entire process Canberrans cannot have confidence in this process or the Minister,” Ms Castley concluded.

While Minister Berry told the Gungahlin meeting, she wanted the process to be very transparent, she said the contract with the original builder was not public and nor were the three reports to government by structural engineers and tiling experts about the pool’s problems.

Kynetic was paid more than $1m in 2018 to fix Erindale pool.