Susie O’Brien: Wayne Carey should have been wiped from the public eye in disgrace years ago

He’s labelled an AFL legend, but Wayne Carey is the poster child for toxic masculinity and should have been cancelled years ago.

Wayne Carey is a poster child for toxic masculinity who should have been erased from the public eye years ago.

If cheating on his wife with his teammate’s wife wasn’t bad enough, then his abuse of ex partner Kate Neilson should have sealed his exit from the spotlight.

Instead, he’s enjoyed a lucrative and high-profile media career.

Now Carey has been banned from Crown Resorts for two years after a bag containing a white substance fell out of his pocket onto a gaming table.

As a result, he’s been stood down from Triple M.

What does it say about people’s priorities when white powder could end his career but his status as an abuser of women has not?

Carey was in Perth to commentate on Saturday’s elimination final between Fremantle and the Western Bulldogs. He’s also employed by Channel 7, although it has also stood him down temporarily.

At this stage he’s still got a job with The Age newspaper as well, which isn’t sitting well with many of the progressive women working there. The paper, which takes a lofty tone on women’s issues, pumps him up as a “two-time AFL premiership captain”.

But it fails to mention other epithets applied to Carey over the years, such as cheat, liar and serial abuser of women.

Wayne Carey doesn’t deserve any of his public positions and should be sacked. Picture: Getty Images

As I’ve written here before, Carey doesn’t deserve any of these positions because of his appalling treatment of women and history of violence.

His abusive ways date as far back as 1996 when he grabbed a woman’s breast outside a King St nightclub and told her to “go and get a bigger set of t--s”.

He was not convicted but was placed on a good behaviour bond.

Most famously, in 2002, Carey’s disrespect of women – including his wife Sally – sparked one of the longest row of front-page splash stories in Herald Sun history – 14 in total.

Carey was busted having an affair with Kellie, the wife of his former Kangaroos teammate Anthony Stevens. The men are still rowing 20 years later.

Carey, it’s said, had the gall to tell Stevens recently he was “worried about him”. What a flog.

Carey wasn’t worried about Sally back then, and he didn’t worry about her when he cheated on her with another woman some years later.

Unlike the media outlets who keep handing Carey lucrative gigs, I can’t separate the man from the footballer.

When you’re a two-time North Melbourne premiership captain, it seems you can be a dirtbag bloke and people still care about your analysis of clearances in the centre corridor.

Carey broke a wine glass in an argument with ex-fiancee Kate Neilson.

Carey’s Miami mugshot after police were called in over the Neilson incident.

This is a man who’s admitted to mentally abusing, tormenting and intimidating former partners, but who still thinks he’s not violent because he hasn’t been physically abusive.

Of course, his ex-partner Kate Neilson doesn’t agree – she says he threw a glass of wine in her face in 2007 and she ended up looking like she had been stabbed.

Carey was arrested for assaulting police following the incident, and he was placed on two years’ probation without recording a conviction.

In 2008, Carey had a punch-on with police at his Port Melbourne apartment. Then, as now, he played down the level of violence.

As always, Carey has an excuse. This time he says the substance was an anti-inflammatory he took with dinner – but who carries these around crushed up in a zip-lock bag?

If it was as simple as that he wouldn’t have been kicked out of the casino and hotel room.

Carey is now said to be exploring his legal options because Crown security staff erroneously assumed the powder was an illegal substance. Carey said security didn’t seize the bag, overlooking the fact that no one but police has the right to do so. WA Police are now investigating the incident.

Why is there always one rule for Wayne and one for everyone else?

As Danielle Laidley wrote in her book, one reason is that his outsized ego is “fed and watered, enabled by players and coaches and administrators”.

Last year he was given another platform to pursue his public rehabilitation as a contestant on SAS Australia.

“I’m not proud of some of the things that I’ve done but I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the last 10 years and I take ownership of it,” Carey said on the show.

Neilson has spoken about the most recent incident, saying he “hasn’t got a great track record for learning his lesson”.

Gee, isn’t that an understatement.

While on SAS Australia, Carey attributed his scandal-ridden past to his troubled childhood. It’s a major cop-out. Lots of people have difficult upbringings and don’t behave as badly as Carey.

This latest incident should finally secure Carey’s removal from all of his lucrative commentary gigs.

Let him slink back out of the limelight and into the shadows where he belongs.