Karen Cox, coordinator at the Financial Rights Legal Centre in Sydney will provide a consumer voice as the public hearings begin this morning for the Royal Commission into misconduct in banking.Cox leads a list of three witnesses for day one of the first round of hearings, timetabled to last until the end of next week. These hearings all relate to Round 1 consumer lending.The next two witnesses today will be Angus Gilfillan, the executive general manager for consumer lending at National Australia Bank and his colleague Anthony Waldron, the bank's executive general manager for broker partnerships.In all, six banks - the Big Four, along with ING Direct and Citi - have leave to appear (and question witnesses) at the Royal Commission. Smartline Home Loans is the only other commercial entity with leave.The Finance Sector Union also has leave to appear, as does the Legal Aid Commission of New South Wales.ASIC, APRA and the Commonwealth of Australia take the list of entities with leave to 12.The Royal Commission is also supplying thematic reading material for followers of its work. Yesterday, it produced an 80 page paper; an "Overview of Australian Law Regulating Consumer Home Loans, Credit Cards and Car Loans."In a taster of themes that may interest the commissioner, Kenneth Hayne, this asserts that "overall …. there is little authoritative interpretation and guidance on many aspects of the legal and regulatory regime for consumer credit protection."The commission also produced a short paper late last week on "Some Features of Car Financing in Australia," which highlighted the dependence of car yards on their cut from fostering a lease or loan for their viability.