The International Monetary Fund has slapped down a line of argument run by Prime Minister Tony Abbott ahead of a visit to Australia by its chief, Christine Lagarde.

Dr Lagarde will attend the G20 finance ministers meeting in Sydney on Thursday and Friday and take part in an ABC Q&A special on Thursday night. In an interview with Fairfax Media's Good Weekend, Dr Lagarde urged Mr Abbott not to abandon Australia's role as a ''pioneer'' in the debate on climate change, saying previous Australian governments had played an important role.

Tony Abbott at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Credit:Bloomberg

In a working paper released separately in Washington on Saturday IMF staff take issue with claims made by leaders including Mr Abbott about high levels of government debt. Titled Debt and Growth: Is There a Magic Threshold? the paper fails to find any evidence of a threshold above which medium-term growth is dramatically compromised.

Mr Abbott told the World Economic Forum at Davos in January that stronger growth required ''getting government spending under control''. ''You don't address debt and deficit with yet more debt and deficit,'' he said.