Most of this concurs with my assumptions that everything ebay does in the way of changing rules, is to aid shill bidding. To play the devils advocate doesn't mean you believe it, but I do think that ebay's bosses see AU as a small country, that, under normal situations, would not make the return on the investment, they would like, so they opted for the alternative to honest trading.
When you think TradeMe was sold around 2 years ago for close to 700 million, to Fairfax Ltd, the originators of Sold.com.au in Australia, and we know that OZtion sold for $1 million in cash, plus $1 million in stock options, in an earn out situation, because it was only break even, then we must assume the Australian market, if run all above board, would not be all that profitable.
Ebay NZ, basically doesn't exist, it's forums are the US boards, and most of the listings are US sellers, so the cost of doing Business in Australia, with it's offices and staff, would need to be on comparison with other countries. My opinion is that the only way they could do that is by shill bidding, and plenty of it.
Hence my theory, that it is outsourced to someone who is adept at registering many fake id's to bid with, and those fake id's in my opinion, would be in the names of existing members, who's information is gleaned from sales from those people associated with such a person.
I just don't see anything else making sense as to why a group of people would be all over the net gathering peoples details, and having thousands of fake id's on ebay if it wasn't for this reason.
When you consider the record of the person in charge of this group, you will know that it's a little more serious than a personal vendetta against ebay because they deleted his long running thread.