I'm no professional, just a relatively inexperienced recreational pilot, but this accident resonated with me as I fly 172s usually and I know this area pretty well. The weather is renowned for changing very quickly in the Byron hinterland...
It seems a lot of you may be more experienced pilots who are judging the accident pilot fairly harshly. Perhaps it was a poor command decision to continue into poor weather, but there's no denying that he had put a lot of pressure on himself to get there, and the deadline of the MR would have only added to the pressure.
One other thing which is touched on in the report is that he had issues accessing NAIPS on the day before and day of the accident flight. If we presume that he almost certainly wouldn't have departed if he had known the weather at Ballina was that bad, so what caused the problem logging in? Was NAIPS down? If so, what a tragic misfortune. Yes, there were other ways he could have obtained a weather briefing, but as a day VFR pilot who might be thinking he is just on a quick jaunt down the coast, if it is CAVOK and good conditions at Southport he may have just assumed that he could easily turn back if the weather went to ****e.