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The president of Sri Lanka fled the country early on Wednesday, slipping away in the middle of the night only hours before he was to step down.

The departure comes amid a devastating economic crisis that has triggered severe shortages of food and fuel.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, his wife and two bodyguards left aboard a Sri Lankan Air Force plane bound for the city of Male, the capital of the Maldives, according to an immigration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

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Rajapaksa had agreed to resign under pressure.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he would leave once a new government was in place.

The president's departure followed months of demonstrations that culminated Saturday in protesters storming his home and office and the official residence of his prime minister.

The protests have all but dismantled his family's political dynasty, which ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades.

On Wednesday morning, Sri Lankans continued to stream into the presidential palace.

A growing line of people waited to enter the residence, many of whom had travelled from outside Colombo on public transport.

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“What Rajapaksa did — flee the country — is a timid act," said Bhasura Wickremesinghe, a 24-year-old student of maritime electrical engineering, who came with friends.

"I’m not celebrating. There’s no point celebrating. We have nothing in this country at the moment.”

He complained that Sri Lankan politics have been dominated for years by “old politicians” who all need to go.

“Politics needs to be treated like a job — you need to have qualifications that get you hired, not because of what your last name is,” he said, referring to the Rajapaksa family.

There was no end to the crisis in sight, and protesters vowed to occupy the official buildings until the top leaders are gone.

For days, people have flocked to the presidential palace almost as if it were a tourist attraction — swimming in the pool, marvelling at the paintings and lounging on the beds piled high with pillows.

At one point, they also burned the prime minister's private home.

At dawn, the protesters took a break from chanting as the Sri Lankan national anthem blared from speakers. A few waved the flag.

Malik D’Silva, a 25-year-old demonstrator occupying the president’s office, said Rajapaksa "ruined this country and stole our money".

He said he voted for Rajapaksa in 2019 believing his military background would keep the country safe after Islamic State-inspired bomb attacks earlier that year killed more than 260 people.

Nearby, 28-year-old Sithara Sedaraliyanage and her 49-year-old mother wore black banners around their foreheads that read “Gota Go Home,” the rallying cry of the demonstrations.

“We expected him to be behind bars — not escape to a tropical island! What kind of justice is that?” Sithara said.

“This is the first time people in Sri Lanka have risen like this against a president. We want some accountability.”

The air force said in a statement that it provided an aircraft for the president and his wife to travel to the Maldives with the defence ministry’s approval.

It said all immigration and customs laws were followed.

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“This shows what befalls a leader who uses his power to the extreme,” said lawmaker Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior official of the main opposition party in Parliament, United People’s Force.

Sri Lankan lawmakers agreed to elect a new president next week but have struggled to decide on the make-up of a new government to lift the bankrupt country out of economic and political collapse.

The new president will serve the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024, and could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament.

The current prime minister is to serve as president until a replacement is chosen — an arrangement that was sure to inflame protesters who want Wickremesinghe out immediately.

Sri Lankan presidents are protected from arrest while in power, and it is likely Rajapaksa planned his escape while he still had constitutional immunity.

A corruption lawsuit against him in his former role as a defence official was withdrawn when he was elected president in 2019.

Corruption and mismanagement have left the island nation laden with debt and unable to pay for imports of basic necessities.

The shortages have sown despair among the country's 22 million people.

Sri Lankans are skipping meals and lining up for hours to try to buy scarce fuel.

Until the latest crisis deepened, the Sri Lankan economy had been expanding and growing a comfortable middle class.

Sithara said the people want new leaders who are young, educated and capable of running the economy.

“We don’t know who will come next, but we have hope they will do a better job of fixing the problems," she said.

“Sri Lanka used to be a prosperous country.”

As a restaurant manager in a hotel in Colombo, she once had a steady income. But with no tourists coming in, the hotel closed, she said.

Her mother, Manjula Sedaraliyanage, used to work in Kuwait but came back to Sri Lanka a few years ago after she suffered a stroke.

Now the daily medication she needs has become harder to find and more expensive, Sithara said.

The political impasse added fuel to the economic crisis since the absence of an alternative unity government threatened to delay a hoped-for bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

In the meantime, the country is relying on aid from neighbouring India and from China.

Protesters accuse the president and his relatives of siphoning money from government coffers for years and Rajapaksa’s administration of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy.

The family has denied the corruption allegations, but Rajapaksa acknowledged some of his policies contributed to the meltdown.

Sex discrimination remains the leading driver of a gender pay gap which sees Australian women earning $2.55 less an hour on average than Australian men.

A recent report by economic consultants KPMG found Australia is failing to close the gender pay gap, which now nears $1 billion per week.

KPMG chairman Alison Kitchen said efforts to close the gender pay gap had stalled and that greater action is required.

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"This report shows that gender discrimination continues to be the single largest contributor to the gender pay gap," she said.

"We must collectively increase our efforts to build a better and fairer Australia."

The report found that in 2020, women were paid an average of $36.89 an hour, compared to $39.44 for men.

This has increased to a 6.5 per cent gap, up from 5.8 per cent in 2019.

The analysis – based on data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA), the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) – showed family and workforce participation contributed to 33 per cent of the gap, while the type of job and industry sector of employment contribute to 24 per cent.

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Importantly, the report found the biggest chunk (36 per cent) of the pay difference was down to sexism.

It found 91 cents (36 per cent) of the hourly pay gap "cannot be explained using measurable data", with the discrepancy put down to discrimination.

Kitchen said when accounting for labour force participation rates and incomes, the national pay gap is estimated to land at $966 million per week or $51.8 billion per year.

The report even identifies that for women, the gap gradually worsens as their career progresses – a pay gap of 6 per cent exists at the start of a woman's career but as many make their way to management levels, the pay gap increases to 18 per cent.

Experts are calling for urgent action in addressing the gendered inequality.

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"Greater action by employers to address the systemic drivers of the gender pay gap is an investment in our future economic prosperity," Mary Wooldridge, director of the WGEA, said.

"Actions employers can take today include undertaking gender pay gap audits and actioning findings, increasing the share of women in leadership positions, and enhancing availability and uptake of parental leave and flexible work by men and women."

Diversity Council Australia CEO Lisa Annese said fixing the issue would be an investment in the nation.

"Action now is particularly important for low paying industries where women comprise the workforce majority, such as healthcare and education, which we rely on in our daily lives," Annese said.

The boss in charge of the Coral Princes cruise ship said COVID-19 protocols are working, as more cases were identified on the vessel as it docked in Sydney Harbour.

Marguerite Fitzgerald, president of Carnival Australia and P&O Cruises, said they're working to the rules established with health authorities which allowed the restart of the $5 billion industry in May.

Four passengers and 110 crew had earlier tested positive.

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Fitzgerald said rapid tests were used today before passengers disembarked for a day in Sydney and "around ten" more tourists tested positive and were put into isolation.

Fitzgerald defended the COVID-19 protocols, which she said were agreed to with NSW Health and Queensland Health to get cruises restarted in May.

"These protocols were designed with the knowledge that Omicron cannot be stopped from any place where people congregate," she said.

"They were designed to manage COVID on board a cruise ship.

"They were designed to ensure the safe operations of a cruise ship and the health and wellbeing of the guests, crew and communities that we visit."

She said all guests and crew are vaccinated, with crew regularly tested.

She added that some of the passengers likely brought COVID-19 onto the ship when it left from Brisbane, despite having to declare they'd tested negative on a RAT.

"This is the protocols working," she added.

"It shows we are very successfully able to operate a cruise in a COVID environment.

"We knew this was going to happen.

"Nobody expected we were going to keep COVID off ships.

"It was just about managing it."

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She said cruising is the only industry subject to the higher protocols and Fitzgerald said operators had to declare cases to authorities.

She said NSW Health had agreed RATs would be self-administered with an honesty system in place.

Passengers getting off this morning confirmed this was the case.

"They treat people as though they are honest," a passenger said.

Fitzgerald noted it was the first time a cruise ship has visited Sydney with passengers for a day in more than two years, as Coral Princess is based in Brisbane.

The Coral Princess docked at Eden on the NSW South Coast yesterday and 800 passengers visited the town.

Many praised the on-board safety regulations.

"I feel much safer on board the ship than I do on land," one said.

"There are no safety protocols on the land anymore."

Another said they had not encountered anybody with COVID-19 on board.

The ship will set sail back to Brisbane at 9pm.

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Cruises resumed in Australia on May 31, with P&O Explorer the first vessel to return.

The two ships are the only ones currently in Australia.

The arrival of COVID-19 in Australia is often attributed to the Ruby Princess, a cruise ship that was allowed to release COVID-positive passengers into Australia in the early days of the pandemic, before vaccinations.

Meanwhile, on shore, NSW recorded 10,622 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours and 15 deaths as infections continue to remain high amid the winter surge.

US First Lady Jill Biden has apologised after giving a speech which described Latino Americans as "as unique as breakfast tacos".

The remark was part of a speech in Texas to the Latino civil rights group UnidosUS.

She was paying tribute to Raul Yzaguirre, the former head of the organisation.

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"Raul helped build this organisation with the understanding that the diversity of this community – as distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio – is your strength," Biden said.

She also mispronounced the word "bodega", a word used to describe general stores which feature prominently in New York neighbourhoods.

Her remarks drew the ire of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, who posted a series of tweets about the speech.

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"Using breakfast tacos to try to demonstrate the uniqueness of Latinos in San Antonio demonstrates a lack of cultural knowledge and sensitivity to the diversity of Latinos in the region," the association said.

"We are not tacos."

Meanwhile, Republican senator Marco Rubio posted a photo of a taco on Twitter with the caption "new profile pic".

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1546679005730017281

Later on, her spokesman Michael LaRosa issued an apology.

"The first lady apologises that her words conveyed anything but pure admiration and love for the Latino community," LaRosa said.

The Democratic Party has long enjoyed the support of Latinos, who account for close to 20 per cent of the American population.

But the party saw a slump in support in the 2020 election, with many Latinos switching to Donald Trump.

Part of the grievances cited by Latino pundits was the perceived homogenisation of the broader ethnic group, which includes people from Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Colombian and many other backgrounds.

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