you'll see they mostly be cleared to a limit on decent 5000, 3000, etc then cleared onto the ILS
Precisely what happens at any of our big airports. And at places like Hobart/Alice/Mackay, the tower just clears you to whatever IAF you want. It's not hard.
There is no flipping between DME arrival pages and approach pages.
There is no suggestion that he was cleared like that. Assuming the wx was relatively cr@p at Hobart, the requirement for an instrument approach would have been on the ATIS. Was it? If it was, he should have asked what approach was expected (ATC obviously aren't going to give you the 30nm ILS if you can get in off a DGA straight to the field), and if that was unacceptable (eg DGA), asked for something else.
Once in the past flying into Hobart, a clearance was given to track outbound on a particular radial from overhead, then cleared for the VOR. At no time was I given an "expect RWY 30 VOR/DME (at the time) so it was a bit of a scurry through approach plates to work out what they were talking about.
Are you seriously telling us that you were overhead the airfield, obviously in IMC, having not decided/told ATC what approach you were going to do?
Maintaining track and being cleared to a height based on a radar return (ADS-B) would reduce the work load significantly! You could almost sit there fat dumb and happy!
I think that would hardly work in the Sector B at Hobart. There are 4 steps within 4nm! Surely you are not suggesting ATC step you down those? 1900ft in 4nm. I would suspect the accuracy of the ADS-B/M-Lat wouldn't allow it anyway.
The longer the silence, the more this appears to be yet another a Dick Smith Class E beatup. Every fare-paying pax flight has EGPWS. If he wants to set up the system to protect his type of operation from CFIT ie approach control at all of our non-capital city airports, who's going to pay?