Ms Truss said consensus had been reached in the “vast majority” of elements of a comprehensive free trade agreement after two days of talks with Australian trade minister Dan Tehan on Friday.
The deal is worth £900million a year to the UK economy and is the first to be negotiated from scratch since Britain left the bloc.
The Trade Secretary said: “There’s a world of opportunity.
“It shows what we can do now we’re outside the EU because we’ve got the freedom, the flexibility to negotiate to the benefit of British business.”
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Ms Truss said the deal with the Commonwealth nation will be a template to speed up other similar arrangements with other countries and added: “It will be the basis on which we negotiate our future agreements.”
The deal will also help the UK move closer to joining the £9trillion Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
The UK has applied to join the vast free trade area which consists of 11 countries including Canada, Chile, New Zealand and Japan.
Ms Truss highlighted the UK’s trading priorities in the Indo-Pacific region, adding: “That part of the world is growing very fast.
“One of our strategic ambitions is to reach beyond Europe and to trade more with the fastest-growing parts of the world.
“Australia is a key economy in the Asia Pacific that is part of the CPTPP, which we’re currently applying for entry to.
“Doing this deal with Australia is another stepping stone to CPTPP accession.”
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8am update: ‘Perfect storm’ Punitive EU red tape is penalising thousands, warns expert
Post-Brexit red tape imposing limits on the amount of time Britons can spend on the continent is unfairly penalising thousands who would previously have been able to spend months sailing around the continent, a trade chief has warned.
But Robin Baron has warned appeals to the Government to push Brussels for a workable solution have so far fallen on deaf ears.
Mr Baron is chairman of the Regulations and Technical Services group of The Cruising Association (CA), which represents the interests of its 6,300 sailing and motorboat cruising members.
