There seems to be a lot of mis-information about this going on here.
I had this same problem with an ex-div trade in 2006. In fact, I rang ComputerShare (2006) and the rep told me that if I sell my shares after the ex-date, and if using T+3, I am not on the register at the record date, then I am not entitled to the dividend. I asked him where does the money go. He did not know. So he made it up. He said no one gets the dividend. So I asked him if there was no owner of the shares after I sold them. Where was the new owner? In fact, he did not know anything at all that he was supposed to.
The real issue is that your broker must update the registry with a flag attached naming Ex-Rights (like Ex-Div) IF YOU BOUGHT the shares EX-RIGHTS, which means for the purposes of inspecting the record at the record date, you are not entitled to the rights issue if they were trading Ex-Rights.
If you still want to get the shares with rights at record date, you can search here for a sellor OFF MARKET and hope that the paper transfer forms are processed in time. But this is at the mercy of the share registry and they usually take a few days to process. If they don't get the paperwork done in time, then you can sue the seller (and would be successful) to hand them over if he thinks he's got a bonus (called a volunteer in law).
From my past experience with both ASX and ComputerShare first tier support. The reps have no idea what they are talking about. They just read from a script.
MRE Price at posting:
45.4¢ Sentiment: ST Buy Disclosure: Held