Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is proud of his ministry but won't rule out a reshuffle as he enters his second year in office.
Ever the diplomat, the former foreign affairs official is celebrating the first anniversary of Labor's federal election win in Peru, where regional leaders have just finished a two-day Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Mr Rudd expressed pride in his team but said they had to continue to prove their mettle.
"I am proud of the cabinet, the ministry, the executive because they have performed very well in the first year in office," he said.
"They have been diligent, they have been hardworking ... I think they have performed as a very good team.
"That's my view, I haven't change from that (but) my other view is that we've all got to remain on our mettle."
Looking at the past year, Mr Rudd said it had been important for the government to keep promises it made to the community during the last federal election.
"For us as a government, what's been important to us is to implement our election commitments to the Australian people and to tackle with both hands and act decisively on the global financial crisis," he said.
"We have been as meticulous as possible putting together what we said we'd do and implementing them.
"That is a good thing to do, it's part of maintaining trust with the Australian people."
The economic outlook the Rudd government inherited last November is very different to the current turbulent situation, and it has already had to slash its expectations for the budget surplus and revise up the unemployment forecast and down growth projections.
"What I feel is the next year is going to be tougher and harder. It's going to involve a lot of hard work and a very tough year ahead - not just for the government. For the economy, Australian people, families, this will be a very tough year," Mr Rudd said.
He flagged the need for "tough decisions", which would be helped by the trusting relationship the government had built with the people.
Mr Rudd flies out of Lima on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, federal Treasurer Wayne Swan says Labor's first 12 months in office have made a difference.
During its first year, the Rudd government was committed to implementing its election promises in areas of tax cuts, childcare assistance, education, investments funds and climate change, Mr Swan said on Monday.
He also highlighted the government's recently unveiled economic security package.
"It's been a very busy year," Mr Swan told ABC Radio.
"I think it's been a lot of hard work, but, as I've said, rewarding."
The most important thing in public life was to make a difference, and the government had done that, he added.
Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull praised Mr Rudd for making a national apology to indigenous people and for ratifying the Kyoto protocol on climate change during his first year of office.
But he was scathing about the prime minister's response to the global financial crisis.
"For the first eight months of this year, Mr Rudd and (Treasurer) Mr Swan behaved as though it didn't exist," Mr Turnbull told the National Press Club.
That changed after the collapse of US merchant bank Lehman Brothers in mid-September.
"Absent only a cigar and bowler hat the prime minister struck a Churchillian pose - the global financial crisis was a rolling national security crisis," Mr Turnbull said.
"In short, he declared another war."
The decision to provide an unlimited bank deposit guarantee scheme was rushed and bungled, Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Rudd's response to an opposition call for a scheme limited to $100,000 was rejected in "probably the greatest and most far-reaching mistake of his first year in office".
"Far from being swift and decisive, the decision was rushed and bungled," Mr Turnbull said.
"It was over the top - it signalled to Australians, wrongly, that there was something wrong with our banking system."
Politics, this time liberally mixed with a big dose of panic, trumped economics, Mr Turnbull said.
"The unlimited bank deposit guarantee has been a financial blunder of epic proportions.
"As a direct consequence 270,000 Australians with investments in unguaranteed mortgage funds and cash management trusts have had their savings frozen."
The banks were begging the government to roll back the guarantee to $100,000, Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Rudd had acquired a rare and unique distinction in the government's "war" on the crisis.
"He is the only national leader whose policies in response to the global financial crisis have actually made the situation worse and as a consequence put at risk the jobs and financial security of all Australians."
Mr Turnbull said the three top priorities for the government in its second year were "jobs, jobs, jobs".
He also flagged the need for a review of corporate insolvency laws, saying one of the reasons the US economy had always been so resilient was that companies to reorganised and restructured in bankruptcy, rather than simply heading down the road of liquidation.
Mr Turnbull also wants shareholders to have more power in approving the salary packages of highly-paid company executives.
"The fact is that many Australians are appalled by the level of executive salaries and even more astonished that shareholders' opinions can be ignored."
The law should be changed so that the shareholders resolution on the remuneration report of chief executives and directors was binding.
"Let the executives justify their pay to the shareholders and if the shareholders don't approve it, then so be it."
Mr Turnbull, who rejected suggestions he was a climate change sceptic, said the government should not design an emissions trading scheme that imposed heavy carbon costs on Australian trade-exposed industries.
That would have the effect of reducing their competitiveness and over time driving investment and jobs offshore to countries with no price on carbon.
"Exporting the emissions is as pointless as exporting the jobs is economically destructive."
Mr Turnbull said the government should wait until the incoming US administration, under Barack Obama, developed its ETS model and for the Copenhagen summit on reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions.
The past year had been a time for reflection and renewal for the coalition, he said.
"We have heard the lessons of the 2007 election loud and clear."
The previous Howard government's controversial workplace reforms - Work Choices - was "dead".