Which is my basic point. This thread is Australian specific and I am assuming you are a current Australian controller and therefore you have the luxury of all that airspace to have options such as giving aircraft the choice. Much of the world is extremely limited with airspace size and complexity and therefore choice. I did have a bit of a smirk when I read a few of the other airports around the world being used as examples of better places to fly.
The US for example has a very mature ATFM system where they have many people dedicated to the task of moving aircraft all over the sky hundreds of miles away from their destination to manage not only landing capacity but sector capacity without making a single transmission themselves. Euro Control are similar. The Dubai example is an odd one. Aircraft arriving first hear about their delay somewhere between 6 and 15 minutes from their feeder fix. As a result they all go to the hold. In the extremely small airspace there, allowing an aircraft to truck on down on their own profile would see an enormous mess form in just a few minutes. Of note, No one ever complains or questions why any control instruction is given.
I recall in the early days of Maestro, techniques for sequencing turbo props consisted of turning them into the wind, telling them their feeder fix time and having them tell you when they had sat on the heading long enough to comply. Most major airports around the world would see that aircraft not only in the next sector but in some places the next country.
I'm not saying which is better just that the nature of the evolution of delaying techniques in Australia was influenced by available resources and in my opinion allows the controller to be 'lazy' for want of a better word.
The one aspect of the Australian method that baffles me us allowing aircraft to depart outside of their slot. This is an example of the overall culture of aviation in Australia I mentioned. This leads to the controllers feeling anxiety when hey have to give an aircraft the bad news because you know full well the pilot is going to question you and you need a pretty quick answer meaning that you end up double guessing everything you do.