freitasm: People should stop drawing attention to Sydney's events as an example of "need laws".
The guy was a criminal. He was accessory to murder of ex wife (plead guilty to that). He had 50 charges of sex-related crimes and waiting for hearing. He was on a watch list but then removed from it, and he had a gun permit.
Obviously the authorities knew about him but yet did nothing. He should have been locked up, he should have no gun permit.
The laws are there, just a bunch of idiots not enacting them.
Don't need everyone being watched because of some government dummy not doing his job.
The white vet in America killed six people, then himself. He was not a terrorist, he was a crazy guy. This one was brown and had a different religion, therefore some call him a terrorist - never mind he was a completely crazy guy as well.
If we had five guys storming a building, holding hostages, beheading them one by one, demanding resources for some illegal organisation then blowing themselves up, yes I'd say "terrorists". But this episode? This one was a demented person with no sense of reality and a failure of government officials to keep him locked up.
Well before decide whether its terrorism or not, lets define terrorism:
Terrorism Defined: Criminal acts through the use or threat of violence intended to create a state of terror by a person or group of persons for political purposes...whether those (political) purposes are cultural, philosophical, idealogical religious or otherwise.
Now we can decide whether Sydney mets the definiton:
Criminal Act: Yes
Violence used: Yes
Created Terror: Yes
Religious/Idealogical/Political Purpose: This ones a bit tricky and comes down to his motive.
We do know that he affilitaed himself with a flag used by ISIS (anyone who does an act on behalf of ISIS would be political) and we do know that he wanted to speak to the Prime Minister of Australia. So I would say Yes he was idealogically motivated.
So I think it meets the definition.
Insansity/Delusional or operating as a lone wolf is not part of the test for this definition.