If you had an overnight, long transit time for your connection, Emirates used to put you up in the Emirates wing of the Millenium Airport Hotel free of charge, but I know they dont use that hotel any more. Might be worth contacting them to see. We find the Hotels pretty pricey and a lot of the cheaper ones get poor write ups for nightclub noise in the likes of Tripadvisor, and as it's just a stopover, thats the last thing you need. Theres a lot of good seat sales on just now for next summer so make sure you are getting the best deal possible. We're going to Sydney in March and found the best deal with
http://www.Dialaflight.com have you tried them? We visit Oz every couple of years and have used quite a number of different airllines, and stopovers, anything you'd like to ask just PM me Alan