ISO3166-2 codes for Australia describe 6 States and 2 Territories. The first part is the ISO 3166-1 code AU for Australia, the second part of the code is two-digit-alphabetic. The purpose of this family of standards is to establish a worldwide series of short abbreviations for places, for use on package labels, containers and such. Anywhere where a short alphanumeric code can serve to clearly indicate a location in a more convenient and less ambiguous form than the full place name. US readers may wish to consider them as the equivalent of worldwide zip or postal codes. Within the Wikipedia, the codes from the country pages link to the pages for the locations they identify.
