This presidential address by Richard Bates, President of the Australian Teacher Education Association, discusses teacher-education reform in Australia, particularly in the context of public education. Bates contends that in 2006 there are two sets of interests that are particularly dangerous to education: (1) those who see education simply as a mechanism for producing the human capital required to respond to the increasingly global economy; and (2) those who see education simply as a means of preserving a tradition, or of imposing a particular notion of community. He suggests that there are two fundamental principles of public education: (1) public education must be committed to enhancing the ability of students to develop the skills that are required to actively participate in, understand and adapt to the continuous transformation of production, distribution and consumption that characterises emerging global markets; and (2) public education must be committed to extending the principles of equity and inclusion in the cultural sphere in ways that encourage the abilities required to actively participate, understand and adapt to the continuous transformation of cultures an the negotiation of cultural differences around issues of common humanity. Bates concludes this address by defining four concepts of teacher education reform: (1) The agenda for reform must be situated within a broad understanding of the transformation of the public sphere and the need to protect the autonomy of education from both markets and cultures; (2) Autonomy can only be achieved within a commitment to social justice and to issues of redistribution, recognition and representation; (3) The processes of transformation are both global and local and the reform of teacher education must take into account both global and local sources of the self as they are brought into the educational process; and (4) Conceptions of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment need reformulation in the face of these transformations around issues of what educators need to remember and what they need to forget; how learning is focused on the sources of the self; and how appreciation of each other incorporates diversity and assessment across boundaries. (Contains 1 note.)