Drake is just a 40-minute drive from Mr Joyce’s second electorate office in Tenterfield, but his office insists a helicopter was the best option to avoid a four-hour drive from his home base in Tamworth.

It was his second chopper ride to the village in less than a year. 

The latest Drake visit, which will cost the public almost $4000, happened two days after the Turnbull government released a long-awaited review into parliamentary entitlements sparked by the “choppergate” scandal that engulfed former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and sent Tony Abbott’s prime ministership into a final nosedive.

The review called for clear guidelines so the “use of charter transport must constitute value for money, and in particular that, in the absence of compelling reasons, helicopters cannot be chartered to cover short distances”. 

Mr Joyce, who has been in unofficial election campaign mode since Tony Windsor recently declared his challenge in New England, arrived in Drake on March 24.

During the three-hour visit he launched a Telstra mobile tower – first announced in June 2015 – and visited the school, a local blueberry farm and inspected a bridge in need of an upgrade.

While the new tower was well-received by voters, not everyone in Drake was impressed with the flying visit, particularly the Nationals leader’s chosen mode of travel.

“Barnaby Joyce flew by helicopter to our little country town of Drake. He went to the public school, met with teachers and children and then flew off ... what a waste of taxpayer money. Barnaby Bishop,” Drake resident Jacqueline King posted to Facebook.

The chopper charter will cost the public $3836, according to Mr Joyce’s office, once the invoice from Fleet Helicopters Armidale is processed by the Department of Finance.

A spokesman said the flight “represents approximately a third of Mr Joyce’s remaining charter allowance” – a $21,000 allocation for MPs whose electorates are up to 99,000 square kms in size.

“The charter allowance is not a bottomless pit and the decision to travel to Drake by helicopter to fulfil commitments that day was regarded as sufficiently important to spend this portion of the allowance. There is no airstrip at Drake, which made the helicopter flight the preferred transport,” he said.

The spokesman said Drake is in the far northern part of Mr Joyce’s electorate and it would have taken him more than three hours to drive there from Armidale, and at least another hour on top of that from Tamworth.

“Without access to the flight, Mr Joyce would not have been able to launch the Telstra Drake mobile phone tower, which the federal government funded,” the spokesman said, noting the timing of the event had been determined by Telstra.

He added Mr Joyce’s two flights to Drake were his only electorate-related helicopter charters since becoming the member for New England.

- Heath Aston, The Sydney Morning Herald