An Australian mother has been convicted of murder over the starving death of her seven-year-old daughter, who at the time of her death appeared mummified.

The prosecution claimed that the mother starved her daughter to death because she was autistic and too much to handle.

At the time of death, the child weighed only nine kilos and she was left to die in her urine-stained room.

Her hair was matted and her fingernails were black.

It was her father who called the ambulance. As the shock of the death set in, he lashed out at the Department of Community Services.

By delivering this verdict, the jury accepted that the woman deliberately starved her child to death but that her husband, who lived in the same house, did not intend for her to die.