Guess this upcoming quarterly profit, page-116

Creating a short position without cover (naked short selling) is illegal in most circumstances in Australia so it is not likely that any stock on the ASX would ever get to over 100% shorts. Also it would require all stock holders to make their shares available for shorting, but, some brokers on the ASX do make your shares available for shorting regardless if have agreed to that or not and worse, you don't get any benefits of your shares being used for the purpose other than your share price going south.

I think your point about the quantity of shorts on HGO is pertinent and mostly irrelevant to HGOs current price movement.