Changes

This article is about the ''second''' level of government division in [[Australia]].

The states and territories are federated administrative divisions in [[Australia]], ruled by regional governments that constitute the second level of governance between the federal government and local governments. States are self-governing polities with incomplete sovereignty (having ceded some sovereign rights to federation) and have their own constitutions, legislatures, departments, and certain civil authorities (e.g. judiciary and law enforcement) that administer and deliver most public policies and programmes. Territories can be autonomous and administer local policies and programmes much like the states in practice, but are still constitutionally and financially subordinate to the federal government and thus have no true sovereignty.<ref name=WP>{{URLwikipedia|States_and_territories_of_Australia|States and territories of Australia|2022-07-26}}</ref>

! ISO<ref name="ReferenceA">ISO 3166-2:AU is the entry for [[Australia ]] in ISO 3166-2, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1.

Currently for [[Australia]], ISO 3166-2 codes are defined for 6 states and 2 territories. Lesser territories that are under the administration of the commonwealth government, such as the Jervis Bay Territory, the Ashmore and Cartier Islands, and the Coral Sea Islands, are not listed.

Each code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen. The first part is AU, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of [[Australia]]. The second part is two or three letters, which is the conventional abbreviation of the state or territory (defined in Australian Standard AS 4212-1994).</ref>