at first look I thought this was caterpillar frass, but when I touched the tomato they moved and scattered like baby spiders .....

are these flea beetles - sorry my camera does not do good closeups, but it looks like tiny black specks (where they feed?) that do not wipe off the tomato - this is Tasmanian Chocolate and I'm in the Pacific Northwest ..

If they leaped up into the air like fleas when you disturbed them, they could be flea beetles. If they scurried away on their legs (what I think of baby spiders doing, but I'm not sure!), they're almost certainly not.

The one on the far left by itself looks to me like a nymph/instar of something like a stink bug. The body segments don't look right for a flea beetle. I can't see most of the others very clearly on my monitor.

The fact that they're feeding on the tomato itself, rather than leaves, also makes me think stink bug or similar. in my garden in Virginia, flea beetles feed heavily on eggplant leaves and sometimes lower tomato leaves, but I've never seen them on tomato fruit. Could be different where you are, though.

I think if you have flea beetles, you should be able to see lots of tiny holes in the lower leaves of your plants, like they've been shot through with the world's smallest shotgun, leaving a lacy/doily effect.

I would not recognize a flea beetle by sight, but Seven Bends description of their damage on leaves is exactly right.

"Green vegetable bug," whatever that is, common in Australia.

The damage looks like stink bug damage. The bugs could be juvenile stink bugs.

thank you all for your responses ......... yes, definitely looks like stink bug damage ...... not sure which type yet ..... totally black

I was wondering why my Tasmanian Chocolate fruit were dull and not thriving ..... can the fruit still be eaten?

I eat it but cut away the badly damaged as it doesn’t ripen like normal. I have finally discovered kaolin clay “surround’ spray and it seems to work,I mix it with spinosad.
Yours look like a harlequin bug,same family.

Agree with [mention]Cole_Robbie[/mention], looks a lot like the young of the green vegetable bug we get down here. Would expect a white layer around each bite mark inside fruit just under skin. Adults are green shield shaped bugs about the size of a large fingernail. They do like tomatoes.

Fruit is quite edible still

They taste horrible.
Got one in a fesh tossed garden salad one time.
Turned me off from my mom's salad for years.