A lot to be said about this article, but I have picked out a small section. The role of State Governments in community arts.
This would extend to Local Government who are at the coal face.
I am hoping that local government councils don't shirk their responisibilities and rely on only private enterprise to provide
community venues, and the say to the arts community in that area, "we don't need an Arts Precinct in this town, look at all the facilities that we have already."
Try and book a community arts fetival at a community venue situated with a football club during a football season, or a bowling club during a district bowling week-end.
In country towns it is sport versus the arts and sports always wins

Creative nation was a disaster . It created a vast swamp of bureaucratic costs and an 'industry' that is little more than welfare for the dominated of the dominant.

"The objectives of cultural planning are vast, defining a new role for local government in the arts at the same time as drawing more overt connections between this level of government and the cultural policy agencies of state and federal governments. Cultural planning also has the potential to challenge existing organisational cultures and strategic practices of local governments in ways that make it, in principle, a radical approach to cultural provision. Most significantly, cultural planning is underpinned by a definitional framework that calls into question the established aesthetic hierarchy and advocates the equality of all creative and cultural practices."

Way too big! Could mean anything.
Culture = the whole community. Are you advocating a 'planned' culture, do you want all of Australia to look like Canberra on Saturday ?

"advocates the equality of all creative and cultural practices"
Equality before who? Equality in what way , payment to all?

PS
"undermines the exalted place of "art" on the agenda of governments"
"exalted"- what have you been smoking?

The CEO's of the AUZCO and ABAF and the like are on $255K+ , most money in the funded sector is paid to managers not to "art".

On further thought this article is riddled with a lot of intellectual dishonesty as to what exactly what is being advocated.

It speaks of "The objectives of cultural planning" but never clearly states what they are.

It is openly hostile to "art" --It hopes to: undermine "the exalted place of "art"".
Is the ambition to undermine "exalted" as a social category OR is it to take the place of "art" as "exalted" ? What and who would get the money and 'recognition' currently paid to "art"?
Could the Author(s) be hoping to occupy the exalted place currently occupied by "art'?

The article clearly identifies cultural policy with institutions and organizations that are dependent upon the public purse. It speaks of 'industry' when it means- one of many contenders for public subsidy :
" Moreover, the "cultural industries" comprise one of the fastest growing sectors of the Australian economy ......These factors have presented unexpected challenges to the arts funding status quo."

Real industries pay taxes. Funding = dependency on taxpayers money, it definitely dos not equal "industry".

There is a lot going on in the funded sector at the moment. Because of the Devolution that began back in the Keating Era there are hundreds of management spin offs from the AusCo that look like separate entities but are not quite real; for example there are at least two (possibly three) publicly funded 'peak industry bodies' for the funded visual arts sector alone. The resulting excessive triplication of management costs has consumed virtually all available public funds.

The sector is subject to reverse economies of scale, by now it is so successful that it is in a constant state of near insolvency. It is looking hungrily at the "the exalted place of "art""

Cultural planning is not a nice idea- if done benignly you end up in Canberra ;tedium and mediocrity. If done maliciously you end up in 'cultural revolution' - smashed sculptures , smashed pianos ; aggressive mediocrity.

The writing of the piece is revealing .

Some examples:

"However, cultural planning also aggressively asserts a cultural industry agenda "
'Cultural planning' is not an entity, it cannot aggressively do anything. The field of cultural production is a highly contested field.

So, Who exactly, is claiming power to ;Aggressively assert a cultural industry agenda? Who is to be the object of this power ? And what is the "agenda" of this grouping?

The author also writes of an ambition to:

"...to fuse within local government the two principal props of the arts organisational structure - the commercial and the public."
The "the commercial" is not currently, a "prop" of the " arts organisational structure". The commercial might take a bit of convincing. (And why should the public give a toss about the needs of the "arts organisational structure"- it is not health care .)

Lastly
The author writes of an ambition to:
"..nurture the creative practices of those who are often marginalised by the discourses of excellence."

Amateurs (and non-excellence) are like the poor ,always with us.
We do not need to fund people to 'facilitate' the pursuit of the average.