Circle the date and make sure you keep your calendar clear, because you won't want to miss this one: Monday, Nov. 30, the province's legislature will reopen for its fall session.

You'll want to see the acrobats, the dancing bears and the man who can spin 37 plates on sticks without ever dropping one - well, actually, none of that is true.

Instead, there will be 40-odd well-paid politicians doing their best impressions of petulant children, with everything from new laws to personal insults and slurs thrown in.

Now, fall sessions in this province's House of Assembly haven't been long or involved in the past while. In the last five years, no fall session has lasted more than 16 days; on average, it has been 11 days - just long enough for the honourable members to become familiar with where their seats are.

A cynic might say it's fall make-work, just enough to make sure they've got their stamps topped up.

But that doesn't mean the session can't be valuable, even if it is abbreviated.

Halfway through their latest mandate, the Tories are pretty used to their government quarters. Likewise, if the opposition parties are ever going to find their feet, they should be there by now.

It should be a time when questions to government get more pointed, and more on point.

At least, we hope.

The last time the House was in session, the province's two opposition parties were actually starting to do their jobs a little better.

But there have been hiccups.

Twice in the last year, the opposition parties have been briefed on government initiatives, and then quickly passed issues through the House of Assembly: one was legislation to change terms on water rights for the Lower Churchill, and the other was the single-day expropriation of AbitibiBowater's timber and hydroelectric rights.

Both were classed as important issues by Premier Danny Williams, and both would probably be trumpeted by the government as good examples of how opposition parties can work with a government.

Working with government, however, is not an opposition's job.

You can legitimately argue that oppositions shouldn't simply take a contrary position merely to stall or embarrass the government. After a while, the dog-in-the-manger approach of saying "everything the government does is bad" - finding a cloud to cover every silver lining - is not only tedious, it's mind-numbing to the point of making people check out of the democratic process.

At the same time, the reason that we have oppositions is so that government decisions can get the best airing possible; issues should be raised in the House, legislation should be debated, and the end result should not be co-operation as much as it is a combined effort to come up with the best legislation possible.

Our advice to the province's opposition parties this session? Do your research well, and pick your battles.

A little less opposition for opposition's sake, but the right amount for the sake of the public interest.

And for everyone in the House? Every year, there are plenty of students in the gallery, there to see how senior politicians do their jobs.

This session, try showing them a little more decorum, and a little less playground.