Daily = don't buy car to pull apart or mess around with. Engine swapped cars are generally poor daily drivers, especially one like this with so many electrical complexities.
I think you need to rethink your entire plan completely or get a second car to do what you want. I get it, but I would not be doing this with a daily or starting with swapped engines outside of the same engine family. You should really pick a car with a relatively tunable ECU or good aftermarket ECU support to begin with, something like Nistune, Hondata, ECUTek for Subies and Mitsubishi or something that plugs in etc... Or HPTuners for LS is an obvious one. If you want to learn like this then get some cheap 4 cylinder fwd thing (SR20 pulsar, basic Honda, cheap Lancer - doesn't matter). Then when you're ready to move onto something else you take all your stuff out, minimal outlay. Even for this, the L67 into VE is still a poor choice.
The Adaptronic is an awesome ECU, however they don't make any plugin ECUs for any Holdens. This means totally custom loom to begin with or you have to get one of those weird patch harnesses. On top of this there aren't any aftermarket ECUs that provide support for GM's automatic gearboxes. To remedy this you'd also have to tie in a gearbox controller from the states. Then you have to factor in things like the cold start ability for the ECU, your own tuning ability to make it run correctly (i.e. safe engine operation), any licensing costs for any software from your ECU manufacturer (I know Nistune has this cost), blah blah blah... Also paying people to put this stuff in for you will eat your budget up quickly.
And for your budget question, for a daily, honestly I'd buy something reliable and not do anything with it. Doesn't matter if it's 1k or 10k. There is nothing worse than trying to fix stuff at 1am the morning before work. Honestly just save longer or buy something else.
