How times change, one may say. In the 1970s, in Wollongong, Australia, a police officer got angry with me for leaning against his patrol car while he reprimanded me for crossing the road while the traffic lights were still on amber.

It is a different story now.

Man Haron Monis, a Muslim extremist with 40 sexual convictions and an accomplice in his wife’s murder, was left to roam the streets of Sydney as if he was only a petty criminal.

Being a religious extremist was enough for the authorities to consider him a menace to society. He should have been behind bars a long time ago.