Well I guess I might as well get my first post out of the way by jumping straight in the fire. I control air traffic, and I believe there is some merit to what Dick Smith has suggested as changes to our system, albeit that I'm not a huge Dick Smith fan on a personal level.
Controlled approaches down to 700ft could definitely be done using current resources, and would be extremely beneficial to the safety of flights. As a controller, I'm really not a fan of the whole separating to a085, then passing traffic and basically saying may the force be with you. I have the traffic picture right in front of me, and could make everything much more orderly than some of the scary self separation I have seen. As has been pointed out, there would be quite a training lead in time for this, but that doesn't really justify not looking at it.
In IMC, you get separated, and once your in VMC, you can be cleared visual approach, then you can manoeuvre how you wish once within 5nm, it really doesn't seem that complex. I would love to see it done at Armidale, there is radar to the ground there, seems like a perfect candidate for it. The biggest challenge won't be the finer details of how it should work, it will be convincing people that the current system can be changed without the world ending.