Dick,
The pilots did mutually sight each other, it was quite close.
You are fixated on E, what I'm really saying is make it transponders for everyone.
For you to say that if the TCAS alert didn't happen, it was never an incident: What are you smoking man? They came close enough to count rivets. If a controller had done that, we'd never hear the end of it from you.
Leady,
Thanks for you patronising post. I definitely know what I'm talking about here, you may be correct, Oz is full of incompetent pilots.
There must be heaps of pilots reading this forum, I'll leave it up to them to confirm or deny the truth of this matter. Complaints re the profile onto 12, with the winds as described (local factors, i.e. tailwinds of 30kts or more become headwind below 1000 is a very common situation) are practically a daily moan.
I'm not against change. I think you might be stuck in the groove with the US model. The sector/approach function traffic info will be derived from transponder provided data that the controller sees on the screen. That's already passé.
Today, using transponders and TCAS, we can eliminate the need for the controller to verbally advise individual aircraft. Saves frequency time, effort and money. The pilot doesn't need to be told about the traffic, he can see the relative position from his/her cockpit display.