Hey, not directly they can't, but the preliminary course is considered assumed knowledge for the HSC courses so a lot of the things lead on– especially in physics and chemistry because a lot of the calculations and basic concepts are covered in year 11. Essentially they can't directly test you on year 11 stuff but you can't really do the HSC course without understanding the year 11 course, if you know what I mean?
Idk about humanities though, I'm pretty sure the preliminary courses are irrelevant to HSC courses in terms of content, and no they cannot test you directly
For maths its different though (all levels of maths). 30% of papers is supposed to be prelim work