Geographical location affecting matchmaking times?

Living in Australia we obviously have a much smaller community than North America, Europe and South America, Im unable to find games in BTB, Anniversary Rumble and Halo 2 Classic. the three playlists I actually want to play, which is beyond frustrating.
So does living in Australia affect how I find games? I should also add finding games in other playlists currently takes 10 - 15 mins minimum. Some days it is less but if I quit from one or two games (some from being disconnected from host) I find that I don’t find games for the rest of the day.

Lastly it seems since the Australasian(oceanic) server has far less people, the only people I match are parties or extreme tryhards, this becomes annoying since level 40s + can match level 1’s to 5 causing in extremely unfair games, a party of 4 or 5 vs some casual guys who have never played before on competitive style maps such as lockout and sanctuary, and then me being on the team with the new players, its a complete whitewash.

Side Note: There is nothing wrong with my internet connection and my nats open.
It would also be nice that if you do search with friends and the leader returns to lobby that the players come with the leader.

Feedbacks appreciated

Yes the queue times are affected by the region we live in. I am in Australia as well and we do have rather long matchmaking times. Ausgamers recently caught up with 343 and spoke about our challenges being so geographically isolated though. Check out the interview here.

http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3488735