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Fiancée calls for safety upgrades after level crossing double tragedy

Last weekend would have been Madeline Botts' wedding day.

But instead of trying the knot in Fiji she spent the afternoon sitting by her fiancé Ethan Hunter's grave telling him how much she missed him.

Mr Hunter, 27, and his work colleague Mark Fenton, 50, were both killed last month at a level crossing in Bribbaree, a small rural town about 400km west of Sydney.

The pair were carting gypsum as a favour for Mr Hunter's cousin when a freight train collided with their B-double truck.

Madeline Botts visits her fiancé Ethan Hunter's grave with their dog Knox on what would have been their wedding day last weekend.

Ms Botts said nothing could take the pain of her loss away.

"Ethan and I have been together since I was 18. He is just the most beautiful, kind, selfless person. Everyone who met him he made an impression on," she said.

But even as she reels from her tragic and sudden loss, Ms Botts is on a mission – to make sure no-one else will have to go through the same pain as her.

The emergency nurse has started an online petition calling for flashing lights to be made mandatory at all level crossings in Australia.

According to the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), just 21 per cent of the 23,500 level crossings in Australia have either boom gates or flashing lights to alert a driver when a train is coming.

The love of her life, Madeline Botts and Ethan Hunter were together since she was 18.

The level crossing where Mr Hunter and Mr Fenton were killed is one of the remaining 79 per cent which are passive, meaning they are only marked by a stop or give way sign.

Ms Botts said both her fiancé and Mr Fenton were extremely responsible people and would never have knowingly taken any risks at the level crossing.

The crossing where the accident happened was "not safe at all", Ms Botts said, with the view of the train tracks being at least partially obscured.

"Where the crash happened on the left-hand side it's got trees blocking the view and it's got overgrown grass as well," she said.

Ms Botts said her campaign was also on behalf of the train drivers and first responders who were often left scarred by the tragedies they had witnessed.

Almost a year to the day Mr Hunter was killed, a man was seriously injured in another accident at a level crossing less than a kilometre away, Ms Botts said.

Until recently, level crossing collisions were causing about 30 deaths per year in Australia, the ARTC says.

The number of fatalities is declining but there are still multiple level crossing deaths every year and collisions resulting in serious injuries.

In Victoria, the Labor State Government has committed to removing 75 of the most dangerous level crossings across metropolitan Melbourne by 2025 and has so far gotten rid of 46.

In Queensland, there have been calls for a similar program to remove level crossings after a 32-year-old woman was killed last month when the car she was driving collided with a train at a Brisbane level crossing in Wynnum West.

Mr Hunter, a diesel mechanic by trade, was carting gypsum when the truck was hit by a train.

In NSW, 63 per cent of the state's 1360 level crossings have active traffic controls.

Tara McCarthy, the Executive Director of Safety, Environment and Regulation at Transport for NSW, said level crossing safety was "an important area of focus for Transport for NSW and part of our effort to drive the road toll towards zero".

Every year, the NSW Government spent $7.3 million toward accelerating upgrades of priority level crossings and also education and enforcement campaigns run in conjunction with NSW Police, she said.

However, Ms Botts said much more needed to be done.

"I have been reading a lot of coronial inquest reports into level crossing accidents. It's been recommended as far back as 2004 that if a level crossing can't be removed then they need to be made as safe as possible," she said.

"The recommendations for that are lights at crossings, making trains more visible and some sort of system that can let a driver know a train is coming by sending something to their phone or on their radio.

"It's just hard to accept that that is not happening when its 2021 and the recommendations were made in 2004.

"You just can't put a price tag on anyone's life. Whatever it costs it is worth it. Ethan and Mark were both remarkable men who are missed so much.

"We can't bring them back but we are just trying to prevent people from ever feeling how we feel."

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au.

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Grace Tame blasts PM's cabinet reshuffle

Australian of the Year Grace Tame has criticised Prime Minister Scott Morrison's cabinet reshuffle, warning "we must not be careful to be misled by superficial distractions posed as solutions".

In withering assessment of the Morrison Government's new cabinet on Instagram, Ms Tame directed much of her anger at the appointment of Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker as new assistant minister for women.

Ms Tame accused Ms Stoker of supporting a "fake rape crisis tour" organised by controversial columnist Bettina Arndt.

NEWS UPDATES: Vaccinated nurse tests positive

Queensland Senator Amanda Stoker.

"The new Assistant Minister for Women is someone who previously endorsed a 'fake rape crisis' tour, aimed at falsifying instances of sexual abuse on school and university campuses across Australia," Ms Tame wrote.

"It goes without saying that this came at an immeasurable cost to already traumatised student survivors."

Ms Tame said Ms Stoker had also supported last year's Australia Day honour bestowed upon Arndt.

Grace Tame

When Ms Tame was 15 she was raped repeatedly by her maths teacher Nicolaas Bester.

READ MORE: Who is Grace Tame?

After Bester's release from jail he was interviewed by Arndt, who later deleted video of the interview after being heavily criticised for appearing to sympathise with the convicted child rapist.

Ms Tame said Arndt was "a woman who had given a platform to the pedophile who abused me. A woman who laughed with the pedophile while they laughed and defended crimes against children, including rape and possession of child pornography."

In a statement released this morning, Ms Stoker hit back at Ms Tame's comments, describing her as "passionate but not informed".

"I've spent my career as a prosecutor and barrister working for justice for women and children who are victims of sexual crimes and unconscionable exploitation," she said.

"In my parliamentary role I fight relentlessly for projects and resources that improve the safety of women at risk of violence.

"Ms Tame's comments are passionate but not informed and they do not correspond with my longer history of work in this area, of which Ms Tame must be unaware."

Ms Stoker said she had not attended Arndt's campus tour but had raised in Senate estimates "the universities' inconsistent approaches to free speech and deplatforming".

"I've argued for the importance of due process in sexual assault cases in the interests of both victims and people accused," she said.

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Tourism industry still whipped by long COVID tail

Location could decide which tourism operators survive the coronavirus pandemic.

Australian Tourism Industry Council executive director Simon Westaway said tourism businesses within three hours drive of Australia's biggest cities were now slowly starting to recover, after a year of being smashed by the coronavirus.

But until Australia completes its national vaccination rollout, Mr Westaway warned the fortunes of the tourism sector will continue to hang precariously.

Qantas aircraft are seen on the tarmac at Sydney Airport.

READ MORE: Brisbane lockdown threatens government $1.2bn travel bonanza

"It's a real mixed bag," Mr Westaway said, describing how tourism operators were faring on the cusp of Easter school holidays, traditionally a boom time for the industry.

"The latest Federal Government tourism statistics show about a 40-45 per cent dip in business."

Mr Westaway said tourism operators located "anywhere within two-three hours of the big cities" were just starting to show green shoots of recovery.

But the interstate tourism market was still massively down, he said, with many travellers hesitant to book holidays in other states in case of sudden border closures.

READ MORE: State-by state guide to Easter travel around Australia

This week's snap three-day lockdown of Greater Brisbane underlined that, with interstate travel plans for many shredded with less than one day's notice.

New data provided exclusively to nine.com.au by travel site Wotif revealed what spots in each state and territory were trending as potential Easter holiday destinations.

– Use the interactive tool below to explore where Australians are searching to holiday

The data, generated before the Brisbane lockdown, showed Forster in New South Wales, Hervey Bay in Queensland and Wangaratta in Victoria were ranked top holiday hotspots.

South Australia's Kangaroo Island and Wynyard in Tasmania were also proving popular, according to Wotif data.

Mr Westaway said ATIC members were reporting forward bookings down by 50 per cent compared to normal at this time of year.

"The market is taking a while to recover, it has been bashed around for the last year," he said.

READ MORE: What the weather is doing over Easter in your state or territory

He believed the coronavirus vaccine would be the foundation for an industry bounce back.

"At the moment the vaccine rollout is very slow, but as it starts to eek into the system it will help.

"The main fear at the moment is border closures, that's the biggest block. Will the borders stay open?"

Surfers at The Pass, a beach at Byron Bay on the NSW North Coast.

The failure to agree the definition of a coronavirus hotspot is also hurting Australia's tourism industry, Federal Tourism Minister Dan Tehan said.

States and territories have been unable to reach a consensus, Mr Tehan explained on Today, meaning state border lockdown decisions can be inconsistent and confusing.

"[We need] to get a national definition of a hotspot so we can get a uniform position from states and territories as to how they deal with these lockdowns when they're necessary," Mr Tehan said.

"That would help give certainty right across this nation to people who want to travel.

"That would just make such a difference to our tourism industry."

Earlier this month the Federal Government delivered a $1.2 billion support package to cut the price of domestic flights and get Aussies travelling nationally.

Mr Tehan said the Greater Brisbane lockdown had come at a bad time.

While domestic tourism is an important part of the industry puzzle, the real cash injection comes from international visitors.

The international travel market, which usually brings 9 million visitors and $45 billion annually, remained dead, Mr Westaway said.

A man on a skateboard is seen going past the closed off Surfers Paradise beach on the Gold Coast, in April.

Tourism filled jobs increased 5.1 per cent in December quarter 2020, according to figures released in March by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

"We have seen 58,000 tourism jobs added in Australia since the low in June 2020," ABS head of Tourism Statistics Jonathon Khoo said.

Tourism has recovered 4 out of 10 filled jobs lost during the 2020 pandemic while the total economy has regained 7 out of 10 filled jobs over the same period, according to ABS figures.

Words: Mark Saunokonoko

Interactive graphics: Tara Blancato