Most of the times, for most of the speakers, there is no need to make a distinction.

Why would any one feel it's important to say they went to Sydney and spoke to the peoples of Australia in Australian English?

I'd say that, for example, there are significant enough pronunciation (and in a few cases, vocabulary) differences between Portuguese in Portugal vs Brazil.

From experience, learning one is not the same as the other.

So there are definitely contexts where these differences matter.

There are contexts where the differences matter, but not in the vast majority of contexts (especially the OP's context).