Being an academic far from the action
I have several Australian colleagues, and the challenges are, in fact, real.  The key challenges I have heard them speak of are:


Time zones isolate Australia/New Zealand from the United States and Europe, though not from India and Asia.   
Travel is very long and costly.  Most particularly, it is often difficult to get people from elsewhere to attend conferences in Australia/New Zealand.


The strategies that I have seen employed are:


Some universities in Australia and New Zealand apparently provide significant amounts of travel funds to make it easier for their scholars to travel and to bring others for sabbaticals to Australia.
Increased emphasis on collaboration with Asian colleagues.  My anecdotal information seems to point particularly toward India, where there are fewer language, cultural, and legal barriers, particularly for computer science.