at the moment my FX strategies are based on small swings and the only reason I have chosen those pairs is due to their tight spreads. The higher the frequency the more impact the spreads have on the outcome ... even 2 pips is too much , 1 pip is acceptable (plus comission) - but recently USDJPY spread has widened. Unfortunately unless you sit interbank or have an institutional provider you will have a very difficult time getting any high freq strategies working. Retail providers are out of the question ... but again I am only talking for algo trading systems and not manual systems .. you can get some good spread on no commission CFDs ...
On another note I think there are more algo/quant traders here in Perth but they are lying low. And in some respects rightly so, however it would be great to get these people together, form a quant house, get institutional accounts, tap into the local phD quant guys and do basically what the rest of the world is already doing. cheers