Due crossing traffic climb NOW to F360
Of course. Doing the climb single pilot in these circumstances is the 'least risk' option.
Let's be honest though, how often does this sort of clearance arise? I've had less than a handful in the last 19 years. It's not clear that this was the circumstances in this case.
Which brings me back to point 1. An understanding of 'least risk'. As an ex cadet, two years in the back seat of a 744 at least gave me some pretty good exposure to the demonstration of this before I then did F/O training.
We all make mistakes (as I did making a climb in much more benign circumstances) and it's important to learn from them in terms of the specifics. However unless we go back a step from the physical errors made and loom at the cultural and other non technical aspects of these sorts of events (which it doesn't appear the ATSB report delves into) then we're missing half of the lesson and to my mind probably the most critical part- the part that stops these things or similar from happening in the first instance.