I have watched with interest the saga that played out over the voicing of "Kia Ora" as a greeting from a customer service employee at a yoghurt shop in Whangarei. Teenager Monet Mei Clarke quit her job, saying the franchise owner instructed her to use "hello" when greeting customers to the shop.
It is interesting that within the 218 comments generated on line, following the story, many thought that if it was a condition of your employment to greet people in English, then you should do so. While the majority argued the use of "Kia Ora" as a standard, commonplace, natural greeting, as befitting an official language of New Zealand, there were those who had more sympathy with the employer.
I am not comfortable with the assumption that the use of "Kia Ora" can be considered as broadly acceptable as "Hello". Culturally, we're not there yet. For me, it's not a greeting I ever use in general society. There is the aspect that my pronunciation of Maori is atrocious, but the main problem is that it simply isn't me. Despite growing up in Northland, and having a childhood with probably more Maori influences than most, Te Reo is not culturally embedded in me. I'm a white New Zealander, and while my influences might be the result of several thousand years of mongrel and distorted European breeding, it is what it is.
I envy Maori, who can powerfully connect with a distinct whakapapa, and the land of their birth. I envy the language, the body art, the tattoos, the wearing of taonga. White New Zealanders decorate themselves with Maori tattoos. I can't do that. I don't feel I have a right to it. It's not my art. And it's not my language.
There is a difference between greeting someone in another language as a courtesy - such as travelling through Mexico and you're doing your best to show you're trying - and greeting someone in a language that's natural for you to use.
Te Reo might be an official language, but we are kidding ourselves if we think everyone is connected to it comfortably.
You have to ask yourself: would greeting someone with "Kia Ora" be the comfortable cultural norm within the community you live and work in?
I've worked in communities where it is.
And I've worked in others where it's not.
And that is not wrong.