Will the latest Senate inquiry into the banking industry shed much new light on industry controversies - for example, by clarifying exactly what it is that Bankwest and Commonwealth Bank are supposed to have done to trash the livelihoods of hundreds or thousands of angry business borrowers three years ago?Hearings in the latest inquiry, the Senate Standing Committee on Economics inquiry into the post-GFC banking sector, began yesterday in Canberra. Two more days of hearings are scheduled in Sydney today and tomorrow.It's only 18 months since the same committee traversed many of the same issues, and 15 months since the committee's (largely forgotten) report. (Though one recommendation was to establish "a broad-ranging inquiry modelled on the Campbell Committee inquiry", a proposal that drew fresh support from mutual ADIs this week.)This time the mandate is "to examine recent developments in the banking sector arising out of the impact of the Global Financial Crisis and subsequent events."National Party Senator John Williams is the prime supporter of this inquiry. Williams has a long record as an antagonist of the industry, dating back to the foreign currency loan flap of the late 1980s.Those agitating for an inquiry - including Williams - may regard the committee's fourth term of reference as the critical one. This relates to "the impact on borrowing and lending practices in the banking sector both during and since [the GFC]."When the Senate set up the committee it seemed likely that those with numerous axes to grind over the approach taken by Commonwealth Bank to the management of the commercial property loans of its subsidiary Bankwest (mainly made in 2009) would have a lot to say.Around 150 parties have sent written submissions. A score or so are from the banks, industry associations and regulators, and it is this group that is taking the trouble to send staff to the inquiry to rehash familiar material on the altered structure of the banking industry over the last five years. The bulk of the remaining submissions are complaints about Bankwest and CBA. Only a few snipe at the actions of other banks.Only three of this group are giving evidence: Geoff Shannon, the Queensland property developer behind the Unhappy Banking website; Guy Goldrick, the Sydney property developer behind the class action against the two banks; and the former proprietors of the Cobar hotel, one of whom featured in the ABC's Four Corners broadcast on the bank's actions.The guts of the complaints against Bankwest and CBA are that they hastened to appoint receivers to businesses in technical default, refused to allow troubled borrowers to trade out of their difficulties and worked to inflate (rather than minimise) lending losses once receivers were in place.One theory (advanced, for example, by Guy Goldrick) is that CBA aimed to maximise the claims it could make on HBOS (itself a distressed vendor of Bankwest in 2008) for lending losses.CBA and Bankwest have dismissed this theory in their submissions. According to CBA, it "has borne any losses it has subsequently incurred from loans