So there was I on market day in glorious Brunswick Heads on the NSW North Coast. Yes, the local markets are in full swing, sugar cane juice, patchouli candles, dreadlocked piano players and a couple my age, she on the ukulele and him on backing vocals. Bye bye bye bye bye bye baby, goodbye.

But round the corner there is another even more fascinating market. The marketplace for the local political candidate is in full swing. Check out the queues, longish but ticking over. Dazzling sunshine. Bargain sausage sizzle. Kids running around.

There is a lot of chat about our beloved "democracy sausage", to be found at nearly every voting booth across Australia. But away from the barbecue, there are so many others who help our democracy tick over. They don't get the sizzle of our snags or the kudos of the cake stall. But they help us every election day.

These are the unappreciated volunteers of the political parties and social movements across Australia. This time, two huge groups, GetUp and the ACTU's secret army, had an enormous impact on the outcome and my guess is their impact will be even bigger over the coming years.

GetUp volunteers had 27,000 conversations with voters in just two seats and 40,000 across Australia . The ACTU's secret army, led by vice-president Sally McManus around 51,000. GetUp's Paul Oosting and McManus co-operated to target seats with undecideds, where those undecideds could – and did – make a difference.

The volunteers were not party faithful, instead a huge grab bag of young and old, unionists and those who have never been a member of a union. Those who wanted to make a difference.

In each case, in each conversation, the discussion between voters and volunteers was this: put first the issues which matter most to you.

Medicare was number one.

I was surprised a week ago when newspapers were filled with reports that said the Liberal Party would lose only eight to 10 seats. That didn't seem to gel with the conversations I was having with voters who were furious, particularly general practitioners. These were voters who usually voted Liberal or similar but who were planning to put Liberals last. And general practitioners were campaigning in their waiting rooms in a way I had never seen before.

So the combination was powerful: ACTU, GetUp, your local medical practitioner; and the results of this volunteer campaign astonishing – in the 22 marginal seats in which the ACTU campaigned, there was a 5.5 per cent swing to Labor (bigger than the national average of 3.7 per cent). Andrew Nikolic in Tasmania's Bass had a swing against him of more than 10 per cent. Massive.

But the volunteers didn't stop on election day. At 3am, Keith Williams, the booth captain for the Labor Party at Lennox Head, starting putting signs all over the local area. He loves elections.

"It's our democracy sausage day, it's a big day in my life and in political life and you want to get up and do it [even at 3am].

"It comes down to that day and you want to do your best; I'm making up for all the other days when I wish I had done more."

But he also emphasises how friendly all the volunteers were. No bitching, no backbiting. They all just worked together, despite their political differences. Everyone was fairly relaxed, even when the queues were a little too long.

Hundreds and hundreds of how-to-vote cards were handed out during the day – and some time in the afternoon, Williams, who has been in the Labor Party for five or six years this time around, brought out his guitar and entertained waiting voters with Wilco's California Stars and Talking Heads' Psycho Killer. Just to keep it lively.

As Williams, who works in bush regeneration, says, Lennox is a village and all the volunteers from all the parties have known each other for quite a while. Peter Carmont, a real estate agent who handed out for the Nationals, started handing out how-to-votes around 1.30pm.

"I wanted to do my bit, to further the cause I believe in rather than just talking, rather than just having a whinge among yourselves."

He agrees with Williams that all the volunteers and all the voters were very pleasant to each other, cheerful and co-operative rather than angry. He observed that mostly young people went straight to the Greens volunteer but others were more mixed and that nearly all returned their how-to-vote cards on the way out, so they could be used again.

Peaceful, co-operative. The worst arguments we have are around what time signage gets put up at local booths.

Lucky we can be volunteers and have our say without anyone killing us.

Congratulations to all those who volunteered for democracy and continue to do so.

And thank you.

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