Upvote:7
The great deals on repositioning cruises tend to be on routes with lots of time at sea and very little time sightseeing or in ports, ie trans-atlantic. You can occasionally find deals on shakedown cruises as well, after a refurbished older ship comes out of dry dock and is heading back to its home port.
A repositioning operation between Asia and Australia has a bevy of potential interesting stops, so the cruise lines build an itinerary around them and make better revenue. You actually would be hard pressed to find a "repositioning cruise" on that route, they would be sold at full price as an "Asia to Australia" sailing.
There are always exception,so you could look at ships sailing in Australia versus those that sail in SE Asia or East Asia, and find which do both. Then look at what each ship offers during the transition period. (though I would hazard a guess Australia and SE Asia have the same cruise season?)
Upvote:8
No, you're not going to find anything cost-competitive with LCCs, meaning a few hundred dollars. (That would barely get you from Sydney to Brisbane.) You can count the number of SE Asia to Australia cruises per year on your fingers, and both markets consider the other exotic and desirable, so there's plenty of demand as well.
Random sample: Sydney to Singapore, 14 nights, bunk in windowless cellar shared with 4 people... $1929pp. https://m.ozcruising.com.au/detail/cruiseVY19APR17