I don't think any people that haven't actually completed their HSC can comment on this. I brought my exam response and for the most part, all the marks i lost were fairly justified.
It just comes down to not answering the question or giving just a straight out wrong response. If your asked to assess/evaluate/discuss and you change it into a describe question, your going to lose a fair amount of marks, since the criteria will most likely ask for a certain number of adv/disadvantages. So for a 5 marker, your going to get a 1/5, no questions asked if it was an assess question and you decided you didn't feel like assessing.
That's not strict marking, that's just fair marking. Why should you be given marks for waffling a response?