Labor has accused the Abbott government of breaking promises like plates at a Greek wedding during its first year.

“They’re there to be smashed, one after the other. They treat these promises as disposable,” Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese told reporters in Sydney on Saturday.

Sunday will mark the one-year anniversary of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s election.

Mr Albanese says breaking promises is the only thing Mr Abbott’s government has done well.

“One year ago they were elected saying no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to pensions, that they’d have cranes in the sky and bulldozers on new infrastructure projects within one year of them being elected … there are no bulldozers, just bulldust from this government,” he said.

“This has been the worst beginning of any government, the worst 12 months for any newly-elected government in Australia’s history.

“It’s no wonder that after 12 months, there hasn’t been a honeymoon, just a shocker.”

The government has been defined by a breach of faith with the Australian people, Mr Albanese said.

His Labor colleague Ed Husic also said the government didn’t have much to celebrate.

“They’re trying to blow out the candle on the cake, but really what they’ve done is blown promises, blown the budgets and blown the aspirations of a whole range of people from students to pensioners,” Mr Husic told Sky News.

But Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says the government has achieved a great deal.

“Reflecting on the year that’s just been, if you look at the outcomes of what we’ve achieved in the context of what we said we would … then you would have to say that we are on track to deliver what we said we would deliver,” Senator Cormann told Sky News.

Mr Abbott says he is reasonably confident that a “very substantial” part of the government’s major measures will be implemented, if not as they were initially proposed.

“In worthwhile ways we can say we are changing our country,” he told The Weekend Australian