It was all still to play for at the turnaround, the score locked at 6-6 as Quade Cooper and Mirco Bergamasco traded penalties.

But Australia exploded in the second half with Ben Alexander, Adam Ashley-Cooper, James O’Connor and Digby Ioane all touching down.

However, despite the difficult start Mallett believes his side are not down and out in New Zealand just yet.

"Let's not forget we played against a team that won the Tri-Nations, they scored 25 points against the All Blacks, we played against a strong team," he said.

"Italy did well for that first 40 minutes and certainly there were mistakes made but I'm very proud of them.

"I do feel sorry that we didn't keep up the pace we had the first half but I'm not disappointed in them.

"I don't think we had complete dominance in the scrum, except for that last attempted push-over try.

"We do have a very good scrum but Australia scored a very good try from first phase ball from a scrum.

"If your scrum is in all sorts of trouble then it's very difficult to score a try from first phase and even though we made an error a try was scored off a set piece scrum and Australia has to take a lot of confidence from that."

Robbie Deans’ Wallabies didn’t cross the whitewash until the 49th minute, but as soon as prop Alexander crashed over Australia never looked back.

It wasn’t long before they had a second try in the bag, Ashley-Cooper carving through the Italian defence to go under the posts, giving O’Connor the easy conversion.

O’Connor, who came on as a replacement, was next to cross the tryline before winger Ioane scored the try of the game to wrap up the bonus-point win.