Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey has cited China as an example of a country creating millions of jobs through structural reform as he tries to convince G20 countries to commit to a global growth target.

G20 finance ministers and bank leaders are in Sydney for talks ahead of the G20 Summit with world leaders in Brisbane in November.

There are reports Australia is being urged to lift growth by cutting employment protections and lifting the pension age.

Mr Hockey has not said whether he will do that, but says China is an example of a country creating jobs through structural changes.

"I don't think I'm giving away any confidences by saying that the finance minister of China pointed out they had undertaken some structural reform last year in China where 13 million jobs were created," he said.

"I responded by saying it's taken us 200 years to create 13 million jobs."

The Treasurer says structural reform is necessary for both job creation and job security.

"I don't think there's a person in the room that doesn't believe that if we want to create more jobs, we're going to have to undertake structural reform in our economies," he said.

Mr Hockey says the talks have so far been "informative, detailed and measured" about the direction of the global economy.

He says reform for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is also up for discussion.

"We are very keen for the IMF to remain credible, effective and legitimate," he said.

Hockey takes look at pension age

Mr Hockey has given strong indication in recent days that the pension age needs to be lifted to make the system sustainable.

It is already set to go from 65 to 67 by 2023, but Mr Hockey says Australia's ageing population may mean it has to go higher.

However one of Mr Hockey's frontbench colleagues, Christopher Pyne, says he would be against any move to raise the pension age in the current term of government.

Labor says it is happy to talk about lifting the pension age but that it would need to see evidence it is necessary before supporting it.