I'm going to do what I said I would never again do, and that is respond to Winstun the Pooh. He is wrong, wrong, wrong when he says that the controller shouldn't have done what he did, and that he should have been more proactive in separating the aircraft. If you read the full transcript, the controller went to great lengths to explain where the relevant traffic was and only once PSA advised that they had the traffic visual did he, advise the PSA to maintain visual separation from the traffic. You hear from the cockpit voice recorder that subsequent to this, PSA in fact wasn't in visual contact with the traffic and should have advised ATC straight away of this fact. Instead they continued to descend while looking for the traffic. It was the unfortunate pilots who should have been proactive and told ATC of their difficulties and the ATC could have gone to plan B and level off the PSA.
Winstun has always slagged out controllers but from his post he obviously doesn't understand the job and certainly could not do the job. I have in the past suggested he sit with a controller during a morning burst in one of the ATC centres and see whether he still feels the same way about the ATC workload and pressures. Not surprisingly he would prefer to wallow in his ignorance. It should be the other pilots who respect and appreciate what ATC does that set him straight, before he causes a rift between two very proffesional and mutually respecting proffessions.
By the way from working overseas, I can say that yes while Australia is not the busiest place in the world to work as an ATC, the standards of controlling are some of the best in the world, and is only undone at times by unsafe changes to their working conditions, and the resulting constant state of apprehension they find themselves in while trying to keep the skys safe.