Excellent report by ATSB. But what an avoidable tragic accident. I note that the flight instrumentation in that modern Cessna 172 includes a modern glass cockpit and autopilot flight director system. FD's were designed to aid instrument flying. That flight was a VFR cross-country presumably using map reading which means looking outside.
Perhaps training organisations need to avoid getting sucked in by the seduction of todays sophisticated flight instrument and autopilot displays that come with new aircraft. Students should not be using flight directors or autopilots during ab-initio training; and that includes cross-country map reading.
No wonder that pilots brought up to use these relatively sophisticated aids in their light training aircraft types so early in their flying career (the unfortunate young pilot only had 50 hours flying experience), eventually become the "automatic monkeys" commonly found on the flight decks of airliners.
The flying school concerned quite rightly reminded its students to only use the autopilot (includes the FD) to reduce the workload if things get too much. They forget however, it is only natural for today's new pilots brought up and expert on using IPads and smart phones will want to play with the aircraft automatics and their colourful instrument flying goodies, during solo cross country legs with no one looking over their shoulder.