+ AusIndustry: AuCh FTA - How does it affect me?

The China-Australia free trade agreement will come into force before the end of the year after a compromise deal was finally struck between the federal government and opposition.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has hailed the compromise over the "historic trade deal", declaring it "absolutely critical for Australian jobs in the future".

He said Australia's opportunities in the Chinese market are "limited only by our imagination and enterprise".

"We have 23 million extraordinary Australians and their imagination and their enterprise will ensure that we have access to and benefit from this market in a way that even the architects of this agreement, principally the Trade Minister Andrew Robb, would not imagine," he said.

He also paid a back-handed compliment to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, noting that he had been "a cork bobbing along in the slipstream of the CFMEU" but that ... "today the Leader of the Opposition has struck out from the slipstream and charted a course that is plainly in the national interest".

Mr Shorten conceded he may have angered sections of his power base in the union movement by reaching the agreement, but said a deal had been struck because "we're satisfied there is a better deal for Australian jobs than before today".

"Labor's always believed that trade should benefit all Australians, not just some people," he said.

"That's why Labor has stood up and expressed our concerns that there was insufficient legal safeguards and protections for Australian jobs."