What was going on when I was born?

The New Zealand Labor Party swept Sir Robert Muldoon's conservative National Party from power in general elections Saturday, a result that American officials say could cause major problems for United States military commitments in the region. Although New Zealand political observers and officials said the chief issues in the election were domestic, the Labor Party has called for a rene gotiation of the country's 33-year-old defense treaty with the United States and Australia. It also wants to ban American nuclear-armed and nuclear- powered naval vessels from New Zealand waters. Latest reports from the New Zealand radio gave the Labor Party, led by David Lange, a 41-year-old lawyer, a 17-seat margin over Sir Robert's party, which has been in power for nine years. The projections broadcast by the New Zealand radio gave the Labor Party 55 seats in the new Parliament and the National Party 38, with 2 seats going to the Social Credit Party.

PRESIDENT REAGAN was point man again last week, but the whole team was playing in the White House campaign to present the Administration's record as progress and its critics as carping. In a three-day series of events his re-election advisers acknowledged was designed to deflect attacks on his environmental policies, the President traveled to the polluted Chesapeake Bay to publicize his $10 million cleanup program for it, to Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River to sign the 14th annual Environmental quality Report and to pledge efforts to preserve endangered species and protect wilderness lands, and to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky to tell 15,000 members of the National Hikers and Campers Association that cleanup efforts generally had lost ''some of their energy and direction'' until he came to Washington. The hikers and campers received his remarks well. Environmental groups had been irritated all week. William Butler, vice president for government relations of the National Audubon Society, among others, noted that the budget of the Council on Environmental Quality has been cut by two-thirds since 1980; other Federal environmental programs have also fared poorly.

- Donna Horton White, who underwent back surgery less than a year ago, tied Amy Alcott for the lead after three rounds of the 39th United States Women's Open at the Salem Country Club today. The 30-year-old Mrs. White, who has not won a major in her three professional victories, shot par 72 for a 54-hole total of 2-over-par 218. Miss Alcott, the 1980 Open champion, who had two spectacular 5 iron approach shots today, scored 73 for her 218. The final round of the $225,000 Ladies Professional Golf Association tournament is scheduled for Sunday.

The United States put a spirited end to the bitter memories of last year's early-round elimination by Argentina in Davis Cup competition, as John McEnroe and Peter Fleming defeated Jose- Luis Clerc and Martin Jaite in doubles today to clinch the three-of-five- match quarterfinal series, 3-0. The scores of the match, which had many verbal outburts from both sides and a face-to-face confrontation between McEnroe and Clerc in the third and most volatile set, were 7-5, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1. With the victory, the Americans moved into the semifinals against the Australia-Italy winner. That series in Brisbane, Australia, was postponed by rain.

There has been no down-shifting in sales of heavy trucks, which are near the record set in October 1979 - and may even break it before the year is out. ''Class 8'' trucks, which have a combined vehicle and cargo weight of 16.5 tons, represent a costly investment to even the biggest motor carriers.

The Mets breezed to their eighth straight victory tonight, their longest winning streak of the season, and put some space between themselves and second-place Chicago in the National League East. Behind the pitching of Bruce Berenyi, who gave up only two hits in the seven innings he worked, the Mets beat the Braves, 7-0, in front of 41,138 fans at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Danny Heep, Keith Hernandez and Hubie Brooks collected three hits each, and Darryl Strawberry and Ron Gardenhire had two each. The Mets finished with 15 hits, and the only starting players not to get a hit were Wally Backman and Berenyi.

This evening, Home Box Office will present ''Draw!,'' a made-for-television feature film starring Kirk Douglas and James Coburn. Nothing so unusual in that, one might think, as the cable network has lately backed a number of original dramatic projects showcasing other performers of like stature. Yet for a movie made in 1984, HBO's venture is indisputably novel in one important respect. ''Draw!'' represents a genre that lately has vanished as surely as the free-ranging bison - the movie western. According to Mr. Douglas, who has starred in a number of westerns over the years, ''The basic conflict between black hats and white hats is always with us.'' For the historian and film critic Arthur Schlesinger, the power of the western myth is based in part on its contradictions. ''At the same time,'' he observes, ''the western celebrates individualism and the need for cooperation and interdependence.'' However, it's been a considerable time since the western was a flourishing staple of the American screen, endlessly exploring and reinventing one of our primal, if double-edged national myths - the wilderness as the last frontier for plucky individualism, and the manifest destiny of encroaching civilization. Now the western seems, temporarily at least, to have lost its hold on the imaginations of audiences and filmmakers alike.

TRENTON GOVERNOR KEAN and Democratic legislative leaders are not the only ones looking like winners, now that a $3.3 billion program to whip into shape an aging system of roads, bridges and public vehicles has been approved and signed into law. Also taking bows is the New Jersey Coalition to Support Transportation, an organization representing business, labor, governmental and civic groups. The coalition, which is headed by Robert Van Buren, chairman and chief executive officer of Midlantic Banks Inc., has been working since early last winter to get the transportation program through the Legislature. Mr. Van Buren was named chairman of the coalition because of his success in having led a similar group that worked to win voter approval two years ago of a bond issue to finance prison construction. The coalition was formed by the Alliance for Action, a Metuchen-based statewide lobbying group that promotes issues its members feel benefit New Jersey's economy. The alliance had been trying for years to promote the idea of a reliable program with a built-in financing mechanism for maintaining the state's deteriorating transportation system.

ANYONE in a position of authority in a co- op or condominium soon discovers the difficulty of finding volunteers for a board or committee. Officers frequently find that they must struggle to fill vacancies. ''It has become a major problem,'' said Irene Soskin, secretary of the New Jersey Chapter of the Community Associations Institute, a national network of unit owners and professionals involved in all forms of community ownership. Mrs. Soskin is also past president of her own condominium - Winston Towers 200, a 617-unit high-rise condominium in Cliffside Park, N.J. As a result, officers who have successfully recruited fellow residents find themselves much in demand for how-to speeches to lesssuccessful officers. Booklets on recruiting volunteers are being prepared, and the subject seems to be discussed whenever co-op or condominium leaders get together.

WHEN Katsushige Mita, president of Hitachi Ltd., took the podium to begin the company's annual meeting last month, he knew what to expect - questions, lots of questions, about the company's obvious sore spot: the case in which Hitachi was accused of stealing trade secrets from the International Business Machines Corporation. For more than an hour, the barrage continued. Finally, Mr. Mita could take it no longer. He interrupted a persistent questioner and asked for an end to the discussion. ''We did our utmost to solve the problem and we have punished ourselves, including myself,'' Mr. Mita told more than 600 shareholders who overflowed the auditorium. ''We would like to do our best from now on, too.'' A round of applause erupted, silencing the questioner.

As striking nonmedical employees picketed outside 27 hospitals in New York City yesterday, doctors inside wheeled X-ray machines around, nursing instructors made beds and gave baths, and supervisors mopped floors and ran errands. At the pharmacy in St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in Manhattan, Dr. Raymond J. Boller, director of employee health services, counted pills and filled prescriptions. Sister Grace Henke, who teaches drug therapy at the hospital's nursing school, carried them to the patients. ''When I came in this morning, the pickets said, 'Oh, come on in, doctor,'*'' said Dr. Boller, who would normally spend his Saturday on Long Island with his family. ''I felt it was my responsibility morally. If everybody else can come in, I can come in.''

If there is any credo for those who consider the years between televised political conventions to be a Siberian winter bereft of spectacle, it's the one H. L. Mencken came up with 60 years ago yesterday: ''For there is something about a political convention,'' he wrote after the 103-ballot Democratic Convention in New York in 1924, ''that is as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is somehow charming. One sits through long sessions wishing heartily that all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell - and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginabaly exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.''