Pistenbroke,
I don't think anyone on this site or otherwise is advocating autoland on a cat 1/non autoland ILS is an inherently safe or good thing to do.
But it's many, many magnitudes safer than coupling an RNAV and flying it into the ground and hoping you hit the runway. It is not ideal, but a much better alternative to what eventually had to be done due to BoM and ASA shortcomings.
I can't believe ASA weren't destroyed by ATSB in this report for allowing AWIS unserviceability for so long, and then fixing it the day after.
Hello ATSB, anyone home???