****su, reading the rules that you have posted beggs a question in my mind, why bother calling it a visual approach?
The pilot has no discretion to self position, no discretion to deviate (until inside the magic 5 miles), and seemingly no flexibilty built into the implementation (if I'm understanding your explaination correctly) which is the general point of a visual approach.
To be honest this is all a bit of an eye opener, I had no idea that flying IFR air transport in Oz was so restrictive. Whats the point of it all? everywhere else I've flown if your are visual with the field and terrain (whether thats at 5 or 15 miles in daylight) and can be reasonably assured of maintaining it, you can ask for and get a visual approach (if traffic permits
) Is airspace in Oz that congested?