2014 Sydney hostage crisis
After the siege began, a staged exclusion zone was established with thousands of people evacuated from nearby buildings, including from the floors above the café. The Sydney Opera House was evacuated after a suspicious package was found; however, reports were unconfirmed by police. The US Consulate General in Sydney, located in Martin Place, was also evacuated. Some Sydney schools were put in "white level lockout" due to the hostage situation, which meant that no school group was permitted to leave the school grounds.
Terrorism in Australia
The designation of the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, also known as the Sydney Martin Place siege, has been subject to debate among terrorism experts and news commentators. Initially, during the early stages of the incident, the Australian government and NSW authorities did not label the event as a terrorist attack; however, as the siege continued, NSW police authorised the engagement of the state's counterterrorism task force, treating the incident as an act of terrorism. Commentators have debated whether the perpetrator of the attack, Man Haron Monis, was in fact a terrorist and whether his actions can be classified as an act of terrorism. One terrorism expert described Monis's actions as those of a "lone-wolf terrorist … driven by a desire for attention and to be in the spotlight." Another wrote in an opinion column that the attack "was very different from first-generation or second-generation terrorist attacksbut it was terrorism, and terrorism of a brutal and more unpredictable sort." Scott Stewart supervisor of the analysis of terrorism and security issues for Statfor said that this hostage-incident exhibits many of the elements associated with grassroots terrorism. By contrast, criminologist Mark Lauchs stated that the event "was not about religion and neither was it a terrorist attack." Media outlets have also provided conflicting designations for Monis; John Lehmann, editor of "The Daily Telegraph", wrote how Monis filled the criteria of an Islamic State terrorist, while a columnist for "The Guardian" wrote how the designation of a terrorist is misplaced and would only serve the interests of ISIL. On 15 January 2015, Australia's Treasurer Joe Hockey declared the siege in Sydney's Martin Place as a terrorist incident for insurance purposes.